Please Stop Laughing at Me: One Woman's Inspirational Story Book

This is supposed to be a true story about the author's life, and how she was bullied all through school. As an adult she became a famous publicist and has gone on to lecture about bullying. The book started off ok but then became harder to believe; eventually it didn't seem to ring true at all.

The author states how she is traumatized and the book was described on the jacket as, "...harrowing tale of survival against insurmountable odds." but the story wasn't like that at all. It seemed that Ms. Blanco was fairly popular a lot of the time and she was only bullied when she made the other, popular kids angry. According to her, she did this by standing up for others who were being abused and refusing to go along with the crowd when they were doing things that were wrong. Apparently everyone else in the schools, (she moved to a different school to get away), was controlled by peer pressure and went along with whatever the "in crowd" demanded--only Jodi stood against them. She made comments stating things like: it was her strength that made the other kids hate her,and her actions may make her a great adult but they weren't helping her now, at school.

Not only was she the only student to always do the right thing, but no teacher backed her up, not even the principal. At one point she indicated that the teachers were picking on her for standing up to another teacher who was cruel to a student. Her parents loved her but kept telling her to ignore the bullies saying that they would leave her alone. She also claimed that her parents at first thought that she was the problem so they took her to a psychiatrist...he didn't believe her either. Ms. Blanco said that the doctor told her to learn to get along and then medicated her.

This book did not seem true to me at all and by half-way through I couldn't wait to be at the end. I almost stopped reading it but I hate doing that and I wanted to see how it ended. It wasn't very interesting because I found it so hard to believe. By the time I was done, I felt like I was ready to bully the author! She came across as a wholier- then-thou, pompous girl.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone and the author never did explain how to deal with the serious problem of bullying.