October is National Anti-Cyberbullying Awareness Month and to shed some light on the cause, meet two of our fiction authors who address the issue of bullying in their books. Ilie Ruby was inspired to write The Salt God’s Daughterafter reading about stories of girls and women who had taken their lives after being subjected to bullying. In the story, we see the journey of discovery and survival one of the characters takes after becoming a victim of bullying.

Meg Mitchell Moore‘s So Far Away directly brings cyber-bullying to attention as the main character tries to escape from her former best friend’s online bullying tirade.

In addition, child psychologist Dr. M. Mark McKee, author of Raising a Successful Child, The Manual stresses the importance of empowering and teaching children to stand up to bullies on their own.

He explains, “While much has been written about how parents and schools can intervene to help reduce bullying in schools and the internet, it is equally important that we empower our children to stand up and protect themselves. This is not suggesting retaliatory physical responses, for indeed the majority of bullying behaviors are not physical.  Rather, children must also be taught to fend for themselves simply due to the fact that most bullies are extremely sneaky and their behaviors are often hard to catch.”