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Authors: Doug Wilhelm

BOOK: The Revealers
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Since
The Revealers
first appeared in 2003, it has been used, often in very creative and powerful ways, by middle schools, libraries, and other community organizations all over the United States and internationally. (For more on this, please see
“The Revealers
in Schools” on page 215.) When adults choose to make this novel the focal point of a reading-and-discussion project, their goal is often to open up the difficult issue of bullying. Sometimes it's just to read the book. Whatever the purpose, I am very grateful to everyone, in the hundreds of schools that have so far worked with
The Revealers,
who has played a part in any of these projects. By now you're all too numerous to even begin mentioning here by name. But thanks.
Here are my original acknowledgments for the book:
Even though all the people, the incidents, and the school portrayed in
The Revealers
are completely fictitious, I was greatly helped in developing this story by the students at three Vermont schools, who shared with me their own stories of bullying, harassment, and similar experiences. I want to thank the students, teachers,
and administrators who helped me at Randolph Village School (now Randolph Elementary), Braintree Elementary School, and Barstow Memorial School, in Chittenden … . Thanks as well to the staff at Williston Central School, who showed me their school's local area network.
I am also grateful to the teachers at Main Street Middle School in Montpelier, Rutland Town School and Christ the King School in Rutland (all of these also in Vermont), who read drafts of this book to their classes, and to the students in those classes for their valuable suggestions and critiques. Special thanks to my friend Mike Baginski, “Mister B,” an extraordinary teacher at Main Street School, for his continuing interest and support.
 
 
My journey only began with those first schools. In my years (so far) with
The Revealers,
I have done programs and joined in discussions with young people of every background, in all sorts of schools—even in a one-room schoolhouse. I've been from Maine to Florida, from Brooklyn to Silicon Valley with my book, and I'm still hoping to hear back from the teacher in South Africa who emailed that her school was reading
The Revealers
and do I ever come their way? (I replied that I'd be happy to.) I've seen how a novel can spread just because people believe in it—and I've discovered, when people do believe in a book, what champions for it they can be. Thanks to everyone, everyone, who has been a champion for
The Revealers.
Most of all, I've seen what many adults don't realize: that an enormous number of young adolescents are avid, passionate, deeply intelligent readers. Needless to say, not every young reader I've met has liked my book, but that's not what matters.
What matters is that they
read.
I'm so grateful—and it gives me new hope for our future—to discover, over and over again, how many really do.
Finally, I'm thankful that
The Revealers
has been in some ways useful to the growing, nationwide movement to face up to bullying, to bring it into the light and help young people who struggle with it understand that they don't have to do that alone. In my travels I've come to see middle schools as laboratories for the rest of people's lives. I think what's most hopeful, and powerful, about the effort to open up new awareness around adolescent bullying is not just that some kids' burdens are being eased. It's that young adults all over the country, of all types and social situations, are getting the chance to discover that the person next to them—or on the other end of the social hierarchy—has hopes, dreams, and fears just like they do.
Early teens don't always “get” this at this stage in their lives when they're first forming their adult selves. Imagine the impact if we can help them cross this crucial bridge. I often find myself telling middle-school audiences: It's generally the kids who seem in some way different, like I was, who get singled out for bullying—but the truth is, we're all different. Every one of us is, because we're all individuals. That's the one way we're all the same.
Thank you for the chance to say that. To discover that. And to be part of this.
 
Doug Wilhelm
Weybridge, Vermont
1.
Russell is the first character to be bullied. Richie is his tormentor. How do they fit the stereotypical images of target and bully? How is Elliot bullied? How is Catalina bullied? Are the methods the same? Is there only one type of target? Is there only one type of bully?
2.
Russell, Elliot, and Catalina are very different from each other. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Is there an explanation for why they're targets for bullying? Is there any justification for the bullying?
3.
Richie Tucker, Burke Brown, Jon Blanchette, and Bethany DeMere are also very different from each other. Are they weak in any way? Are there any reasons for their cruelty to others? Are they good reasons?
4.
Some types of bullies use their social status to torment other kids they find inferior. Are any of the bullies in this book doing that? That type of bully might be hardest for teachers to notice. Why might they be invisible to authority figures?
5.
Big Chris Kuppel starts out as a supporter of Burke and Jon's behavior, but then he changes. Why? How does he treat Elliot by the end of the book?
6.
Name-calling is often the first bullying behavior learned. Why is that? Make a list of the names that are used in this book to hurt someone. Are they all words that would be considered insulting if used in a different way?
7.
Richie seems to take pride in being a bully, but Russell sees something vulnerable in him. Do you agree or disagree with Russell? What might be Richie's motivation? Why do you think he's willing to do the interview for The Bully Lab?
8.
Do you think this book is showing something that doesn't happen very often, that bullying is uncommon? Do some research and see to see how big or small the problem of bullying is today.
9.
Is bullying a problem at your school? Do you think everyone is treated equally by the teachers and principals? In the cafeteria, does everyone have a place to sit?
10.
If there is bullying at your school, how does the school deal with it? Is there a bullying prevention program? Is there a way to report bullying that everyone is aware of? Do you think kids are safe to report it and that they will be taken seriously?
11.
What could you do to help prevent bullying?
BY DOUG WILHELM
 
 
 
 
 
The writer of a book isn't the only person who can have a creative relationship with it. I first saw this soon after
The Revealers
was published, when a few schools in Vermont, where I live, began to work with my novel. Over the next few years, this would become something that was happening nationwide—but it started here. And in those first schools I began to see what teachers and others, including students, can do to bring a story to life.
For example, there was the morning in the South Hero “gymnatorium.”
In this little K—8 school in rural South Hero, Vermont, grades 6—8 had read
The Revealers,
and they wanted to engage the younger classes with some of what the story had brought up. So on the morning of my visit, we were all brought together in the school's biggest room—the kindergarteners and first graders sitting on the floor up front, then the middle grades, then the adults, including me, perched on chairs along the sides. At this school, the upper grades had a drama club; and the drama club had an idea.
On the stage were two tables, side by side. At one sat two middle-school boys. The adult who introduced the skit said this
would be based on a scene in
The Revealers,
which the older kids had just finished reading. At that point I understood: This would be the library scene, in chapter four, where Russell and Elliot watch a nasty note get dropped on the next table where Catalina, the new girl from the Philippines, has been doing homework.
But I was wrong. The situation had come from the book, but the scene was new. As the two boys watched, as we all watched, a girl came out, sat at the next table, and began quietly reading. Then out came another student, who stood behind this
girl
and said:
You don't belong here. You don't belong here.
She kept chanting this as another came out and said:
Nobody likes you. Nobody likes you.
And a third:
Go back where you came from!
The younger kids, looking up, were goggly-eyed. They got it, I got it—we all got it. As the crowd behind the new girl grew, and as its cruel chanting amplified, the bullying words seemed to echo, around the room and in our heads. Everyone who was there that morning saw, heard, and felt what it's like to have taunts like these reverberate inside you, over and over, because you're different or awkward or new or you've just somehow become a target.
And I had written none of those words. Just, you could say, provided a platform.
That's what
The Revealers
has been, in school after school: a platform. The story seems to easily become a springboard for discussion, for opening up the social struggles that so often preoccupy middle schoolers, and sometimes even for breaking through to new understanding. But these outcomes don't just happen because the book is assigned or read. They are generated, I've observed, when adults—and sometimes also students—who work with this book apply their own ideas for engaging young people with it.
That is the key.
I'm very lucky. I still get to visit schools that work with my book, and often I see fresh creativity brought to the challenge of turning the story into a springboard. Sometimes I get into funny or memorable situations. I've played Alex Trebek in a
“Revealers
Jeopardy” game show that was broadcasted on a school's own TV system. I've found myself in a room full of fourth through sixth graders dressed as original superheroes, whose profiles and powers the kids had dreamed up, like the Purple Phantoms (“Our role during the reading was to find hidden acts, both good and evil”). I've listened to a classroom of sixth graders avidly explain how they put a bystander character from my story through a full-scale, court-simulation trial, where he was charged before a jury for failing to stop the bullying that he saw. (Was he convicted? From year to year, that can change.)
I'm lucky, too, because sometimes young people share things with me. At a visit I may be handed a note, often by a student who flees before I can read it. After I've been to a school, I may receive a letter or an e-mail. I'm not saying this happens every time, but it happens. “Your book relates to everybody in our school,” one girl wrote. “I am not going to lie I have been bullied before, but I have bullied people before, and I am not proud of it.”
I had no lesson to teach; I was trying to write a good story. What has happened with
The Revealers,
what continues to happen in schools around the country, always amazes me—and I give most of the credit to the kids and their teachers, librarians, guidance counselors, principals, and others. It takes courage to talk about this stuff in real life. And each new resonating experience always seems to have grown from someone's idea for building on the book, for helping it be the start of young people talking with each other, and hearing or seeing each other, in some new way.
One last observation. When I hear from students who've been part of a reading and discussion project with my book,
they will occasionally say something like this: “I used to do that stuff,” meaning bullying. “But I don't anymore.”
When kids write this, they always seem to give the same reason.
The reason is this: “Now I know how it feels.”
QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR
Doug Wilhelm
 
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Oh, I wanted (at different times) to be a cartoonist, a football player, an oceanographer, a rock guitarist. I had no talent in any of these areas.
 
When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
I had a ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Behr, who had us discussing the realistic novels we were reading. I had a lot to say, because I was a big reader, but I was so unpopular that normally kids wouldn't listen. Mr. Behr was tough, though, and in his class you had to listen with respect. That year, because of that class, some key turned inside me and I started writing stories and poems—even a play—but secretly, in my room. I didn't want to give other kids any new ammunition for making fun of me. But that was the first time I discovered I might have something to say, and some ability to say it. It was a turning point in my life. Thanks, Mr. Behr.
 
What's your most embarrassing childhood memory?
Whatever it is, I've suppressed it. I was just generally embarrassed about being me.
 
What's your favorite childhood memory?
When I was in second grade, we moved into a new suburban neighborhood, and I took a toy rifle and led several kids on an exploratory expedition into its backyards. The neighborhood had the typical kid-legends and rumors—that a rat the size of a cat lived under one storm-sevver grate, that some other creature of a vague sort was in the cattails somewhere else. I wanted the adventure of going to see. I remember that afternoon so clearly.
 
As a young person, who did you look up to most?
My parents tried, but I was raised largely by television. So my first role models were black-and-white early TV characters. The Lone Ranger. Sky King. Rob Petrie. Rocket J. Squirrel. None of these characters were actually real people, so that was, I guess, part of the problem.
 
What was your favorite thing about school?
Safety patrol. I got to wear a badge. Also kickball, even though I would reliably be assigned a position like “fourth right field.” Only the least coordinated kids know what fourth right field is.
 
What was your least favorite thing about school?
Math! Also fourth right field.
 
What were your hobbies as a kid? What are your hobbies now?
Back then I loved baseball, the games we played in the neighborhood (we had a great neighborhood), and building airplane models. I wanted to play music, but everyone said I was terrible
at it. Today I play music! I play harmonica, conga drums, and other percussion in a band called the Avant Garde Dogs. I love it when you play and people smile, and dance.
 
What was your first job, and what was your “worst” job?
My first job was as a farmhand on a dairy farm in Orwell, Vermont, which is actually near where I live now. I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and in tenth grade I became obsessed with the idea of becoming a dairy farmer in Vermont. This lasted until I actually spent a summer
working
on a dairy farm. That summer I learned how to work; it was also the last time I dreamed about becoming a farmer. My worst job was doing inventory in a brass factory for a week, also as a teenager. I was horrified by the confinement of having to punch a clock, and that was the only time I ever did.
 
How did you celebrate publishing your first book?
I cleaned trash cans. No, I did! When the call came in that my book was being published, it was a Friday morning and I called everyone I could think of, but I couldn't reach anyone to tell them. So I left a few messages, then collected all the trash cans in the house (the little, indoor ones), put them in the bathtub, and scrubbed them. I had to do something with all that energy.
 
Where do you write your books?
I have written in all sorts of places, from cafés to libraries to basements to bedrooms to actual offices. I don't think it matters much where you work, as long as you work. Right now I like to write sitting on the couch in our living room, especially early in the morning. I'm here right now; I can see the bird feeder, outdoors. So can the cat.
 
What sparked your imagination for The Revealers?
My son, Brad, planted that idea. We were having lunch when he was in second grade, and he told me that at his elementary school, he and a couple of friends had a secret bully lab. I asked, “What
is
that?” And he said, very earnestly: “It's a place in the school where we lure the bullies and dissect their brains.” I asked more questions and figured out that what he was really doing was sitting under a slide on the playground, during recess, and watching how some kids were cruel to other kids. Typical playground stuff. But Brad and his friends wondered: “What are those kids thinking when they do that? What's going through their minds?” That was what he really meant by dissecting brains—and that's what gave me the idea for
The Revealers.
To dissect something is to take a scientific approach to understanding it, and that's what Russell, Elliot, and Catalina try to do in the book.
 
Of the books you've written, which is your favorite?
I still feel partial to my first one,
The Heart of the Bazaar,
which never got published. It was a nonfiction “journey” story about traveling in the Muslim world and just talking with people. I left my newspaper job in my late 20s, back in the early 1980s, to do it. I worked on the book for ten years, and it was rejected seventy-five times. I still think it was good! But getting your first book published is very hard.
 
What challenges do you face in the writing process, and how do you overcome them?
The most familiar challenge is the fear. This generally comes before you start writing something. It's the voice in your head that says, “Who are you to do this? Why do you imagine this could be any good?” For me, at least, this uneasiness of fear is part of the process of doing creative work. I've learned that the more important it is for me to write something, the more challenging it is, the
more scared I will feel before I start. So I just start. Once you're actually doing it, the fear will start to drift away.
 
Which of your characters is most like you?
In
The Revealers,
Russell began with the memory of being me—a very awkward seventh-grader (I was actually much more awkward than he is), who is bright and creative but doesn't realize that, tends to get down on himself, and is very confused by how annoyingly uncool he is to other kids.
 
What makes you laugh out loud?
I love to laugh! I really enjoy Jon Stewart on
The Daily Show.
I like people who make you see things in a new way—people who
see,
then find the humor that opens up the truth or helps you see, too. I'm a huge fan of humor writing, which is a very hard type of writing to do. The one thing I collect, sort of collect, is books by twentieth-century humor writers, like James Thurber and P.G. Wodehouse, who invented the butler Jeeves. He wrote over ninety novels, and I keep searching for ones I haven't read.
 
What do you do on a rainy day?
I might like best to go to a used-book store, poke around, then take what I've found to a café and just read.
 
What's your idea of fun?
I get excited to find books that you're really sorry to finish, that you keep on thinking and feeling things about. I also have fun talking with friends, telling stories, and playing music or hearing music live. My wife, Cary, and I enjoy dancing together, and we really like being on the water. If I still lived near the ocean, I would walk on the beach every day. I love the edge of the ocean.
 
What's your favorite song?
I could spend days debating that and never decide! I do know my favorite album or CD: It's
What's Going On
by Marvin Gaye. That is over forty years old, and it's absolutely about what's going on right now. Download it, you won't be sorry.
 
Who is your favorite fictional character?
Of all time (this one I know), it's Kim in Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel of that name, which is my all-time favorite book. When I was in seventh grade, the age of my
Revealers
characters, my favorite was Johnny Tremain in the YA novel by that name. I would imagine myself as a minor character in that book, toasting bread and cheese late at night with Johnny in Boston in 1775. I didn't need to be a major character! A minor one was fine.
 
What was your favorite book when you were a kid? Do you have a favorite book now?
A breakthrough book for me in middle school—the first one that influenced me as someone interested in writing—was
The Human Comedy
by William Saroyan. This was basically a YA novel, about a poor Armenian-American boy in a California farm town during World War who gets a job delivering telegrams because he has a bicycle. Then he has to deliver a message from the War Department, saying that a mother's son has been killed in battle. It's a fine story, but what really struck me about Saroyan's writing was its vitality. He described his approach as to “jump in the river and start swimming.” Today I have lots of favorite books by YA authors—but if I had to pick a single one, I'd say Louis Sachar's
Holes.
That's just a great book.
 
What's your favorite TV show or movie?
Saturday Night Live.
I also like the late-night comics, not just Jon Stewart but also Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel and Craig
Ferguson. But I have to watch them on the Internet, because I can't stay up that late!
 
If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?
My lovely wife, Cary. But we would need someone who could find food and have survival skills—so maybe also Crocodile Dundee. Remember that movie character from the Australian Outback? But he's
fictional.
So that might not be a big help.
 
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and what would you do?
Twice in my twenties I spent time—once a year and a half—in Kathmandu, Nepal. That's an amazing place, and someday I want to go back. Otherwise, hmmm … I would like to visit Cuba, Morocco, Botswana, Kerala in southern India, and Tahiti. Give me ten minutes and I'll think of twenty more.
 
If you could travel in time, where would you go and what would you do?
I'd go to Paris in the 1920s, when a bunch of soon-to-be-famous writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald were messing around, working and struggling to get noticed. I'd also like to live in San Francisco in its early boom years. I just think I would get great stories out of that place and time.
 
What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?
It came from an old-time newspaper man that I met when I was seventeen. He gestured toward a typewriter (this was a long time ago) and said, “Use it. Write every day.” I ignored that advice for a long time, but it was very good. In a similar way, the great writer E. B. White, in
The Second Tree from the Corner,
quotes
another veteran newsman who advised him, as a young man straining for deathless phrasing on a story: “Just say the words.”

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