Sully Messed Up
Page 18
While it’s not surprising that among those we meet in school there are bullies who are more or less our own age (like Tank, Dodger, and Ox), Sully also has to deal with adults who have little understanding or sympathy for his situation—and they are educators who should be ready to support him. Why did you want to include Mr. Green and Miss Winter as characters in this story?
School is just a microcosm of life and the world at large. There are good and bad people everywhere. I had many brilliant teachers at school who inspired me (a shout-out to my Grade 7 teacher, Mr. Tellier), and I also had others who weren’t quite so wonderful. Ms. Wippet is one of the good ones; a teacher who is not only passionate about what she teaches, but someone who sees her students. I wish a Ms. Wippet for all my readers.
But I also think it’s important to show the range of good and not-so-good, so that if a student meets the self-absorbed indifference of a Mr. Green or the self-important harshness of a Miss Winters, they don’t assume there’s nowhere else to turn. Just because you are an adult and a teacher doesn’t mean you have everything all figured out (both Mr. Green and Miss Winters end up learning from their students). At the same time, I believe every student reading this will have one or several really gifted human beings as teachers in their school, if they open their eyes to look for them.
This is your first published novel, and it deals with a difficult theme. What advice do you have for young people who want to write their own stories about ideas or experiences that haven’t been easy to deal with?
For me, writing has always been a way of processing my thoughts, good and bad. I have a trunk full of diaries from when I was a kid. Often, the processing we need to do is over the hard stuff, as we try to make sense of things and find a way to deal with hard situations. In between the living and the writing is the stuff that builds our characters, and sometimes stories emerge.
I would encourage young people to take their hard stuff—write it down, flip it upside down, and turn it inside out. What falls out is called learning. Can you re-write the way you feel about something bad that happened to you, because you’ve taken the time to think and process? Can what you learned help someone else do a little of their own self-reflection? Can what you write become someone else’s springboard? Stories come from life. Your life has stories that may be worth telling.
Many kids find the move from elementary to high school difficult. For some, like Sully, the challenge may seem too difficult to explain to parents or others in their families. Do you know of resources available to young people who need support and encouragement at such times?
Whether you’re in high school, elementary or middle school, if you need someone to help you through feelings of anxiety and isolation, please reach out to one of these resources who will help you:
•Kids Help Phone (Canada): 1-800-668-6868
•National Suicide Prevention Hotline (U.S.): 1-800-273-8255 (1-800-273-TALK)
•Crisis Text Line:
–US & UK: Text Hello to 741741
–Canada: Text Hello to 686868
Thank you, Stephanie, for your insights and information.