Jake Drake, Bully Buster

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying.

Jake Drake, Bully Buster shows that individuals can make a difference in their own experiences with bullying—but it also makes clear that bullying is a systemic problem that children should not be left to fight against on their own. The novel’s protagonist is an ordinary and relatable child—he is not the smartest, strongest, or most talented child in his school, he has flaws and vulnerabilities like most children, and his narrative voice is constructed to be friendly and amusing but in no way exceptional. In Chapter 1, Jake explains that he has been bullied for years, by various people. The bullying behaviors he has had to contend with are relatively mild—having a cookie stolen, a LEGO construction demolished, or his lunch squished, for example. Jake is not talking about extreme persecution; he is talking about the ordinary small aggressions many children experience. Jake’s theory about which kids get picked on by bullies also emphasizes the ordinary: He claims that bullying happens to those who are neither too big nor too small, who don’t have an older sibling in the same school, who are not tattletales, and who seem smart enough to make bullies feel inferior.