QUESTION: Your new book features a playground bully. What are issues that kids deal with when they’re bullied?
JULIANNE MOORE: Well, this book is really not about bullying. It’s about a child who perceives one child to be a bully. You know, she’s afraid of dodgeball — of that whole situation — and then this one child perceived to be very scary and very different turns out to be someone with his own fears as well. This is one thing I talk to my kids a lot about, when they come back and say, "So and so is mean," or "They don’t like to play," or "I don’t like the way they play." And I say, "Well do you think the kid is not necessarily mean, but the kid is shy or the kid is scared, or someone has been mean to that child and that’s why they’re being mean? Why don’t you try to figure out what’s going on with that child." Because children aren’t naturally bullies. Often there’s something going on that’s affecting their behavior. So I sort of encourage my children to find out what happened with that other child, and often they say, "You were right Mommy, she’s not mean, she’s shy," or "She didn’t feel like she had any friend" The whole thing about bullying is you can’t wait till kids are nine, ten, eleven, twelve and say, "Hey this kid’s a problem." Start young when they are really, really little and try to talk to them about empathy and compassion and take a look at what this child’s situation is. Nip it in the bud that way.
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Q: Are you or have you ever been a fan of dodgeball?
JULIANNE: No. You know, I have a friend who always jokes that I’m just writing about all of my childhood traumas! The first one was freckles, and this is about dodgeball, a game that seemed so anachronistic to my editor that she said, "I don’t think people play dodgeball anymore," and I’m like, "Let me assure you, they do!" No I never liked it; I never really liked sports. But actually my kids love it. They’re not afraid of it at all. I have sporty kids and they don’t understand my fear. I know a whole group of people — big kids and even grownups — that hate it. Or it’s just one of those polarizing sports.
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Q: What are your children’s favorite books?
JULIANNE: My daughter is in the first grade so the series she likes the best right now is Junie B. Jones, which I adore. Brilliant. She’s also really liking some of those fairy books, those slightly dopey fairy books. But she’s right on chart age wise for that whole fairy phenomenon. My son is really into Rick Riordan these days. He really likes the Percy Jackson series — he actually just finished the last one. So that’s the kind of stuff they’re reading.
Q: What books have your kids introduced you to?
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[Photo Credit: © Robin Platzer]
