This “Personal Experience” is a little different for LeanOnUs as it’s fictional and written on behalf of Benjamin Franklin, in a sense!
Most of us know Benjamin Franklin as a founding father of the United States or as the man who discovered electricity. The reason for sharing Ben’s story with you all is that he experienced bullying by his older brother, James, and sadly, once he left home he never returned. Maybe you can relate to this and, if not, you may know someone who this has happened to.
We can only image the situations that Ben faced when he was a young boy but Timothy Pina and Richard Paul have put together a lovely book called ‘Bullying Ben’ to help raise awareness and to show that even if we are bullied there is still hope and not to give up. The most important thing though, is to speak out and tell someone. Confiding in someone is important and having support can make all the difference to helping you get through or helping you to deal with a bad situation.
Encouraging children to speak out and to help them realise what some of their friends might be feeling/going through is what this book does. What is also great about this book, is that it is simply written for children and is less than 30 pages long. It has great illustrations and throughout the book there are snippets or ‘Fun Facts’ relating to Ben’s life that we know ARE true… like him discovering electricity, that he spoke five languages and that at the age of 16 he became a vegetarian so that he could save money to buy books!
Bullying Ben audio is available on Xbox and Google play