As an author of a children’s book about bullying, I am always looking for other like-minded authors and their books to get their takes on the subject of bullying. Yesterday I purchased a copy of Joshua’s Island on Smash Words.  I started reading it and i was up most of the night because I had a hard time putting it down.

Joshua’s Island is written in first person, alternating between Joshua and Eve, two 13 year old students in middle school. Joshua is a boy who has been bullied by the same four boys for three years, with the degree of bullying increasing as the years went by. Small in stature, Joshua is the shortest boy in his class and often a victim of ridicule, rumors, and physical violence. He has no friends and he feels very isolated from everyone in the school.

Eve is dealing with her own growing pains. Having been taken under the wing of the most popular girl in the school over the summer, she finds out the true price of popularity as she loses just about everything that she held dear, including almost losing herself.

Joshua and Eve were thrown together by their science teacher to be lab partners,starting out butting heads but find that they have much more in common than they could have ever imagined.  This poignant and beautiful story shows that friendship can be found in the most unlikely of places.

Joshua’s Island has a strong anti-bullying message but it also has a very strong message about the meaning of friendship and how everyone, no matter how big, small, young, or old can either stand up against bullying or contribute to the problem by complacency or ignorance.

I give this book 5 stars out of 5. It’s an excellent book for middle and high school students. It’s a book that should be in every library and should be a required reading. It truly shows how bad bullying can get before anyone does anything about it.

Joshua’s Island can also be purchased on Amazon.