The book Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass is a book based around bullying. Piddy recently moved from one neighborhood to another. The problem was that despite the two neighborhoods being close, they were in different school zones. Piddy ended up transferring to the new school at the beginning of the new school year. She is regarded as the "new girl" for the first few weeks and most people don't pay here any attention. Then she starts to get bullied.
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass is highly aware of how real bullying works. When Yaqui Delgado thinks that Piddy is talking to her boyfriend Yaqui sets out to make Piddy's life miserable. It starts first with subtle warnings towards Piddy. But it soon escalates to where Yaqui is throwing chocolate milk containers at Piddy so they burst and mugging her and stealing her necklace. Even Piddy's friends start to stay away from her in fear. Piddy enters a daze similar to post-traumatic stress after losing her necklace. Her main goal is no longer school, its survival, and there's no room for the "space in-between."
Unfortunately, I think this book takes a pretty accurate view on bullying. One person bullies another because they find something wrong with that person and they know they can get away with it. This is perfectly exemplified in the book with Yaqui and Piddy. Then the bullied person's friends start to shy away to avoid being bullied themselves. It's something that is difficult to stop. Considering how far the book has come in under a hundred pages, I wonder what will happen next. Will Piddy's bullying get worse? Will she lose all of her friends? How will this bullying stop?
Hopefully the bullying gets better but not thinking that is super likely. If anything, it will probably get worse before it starts getting better- if it ever does.
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