Notes from Doug
Read and discussed by over 1,000 middle schools across the U.S., The Revealers is a multi-character novel for young adults that deals with bullying in a realistic, unpreachy way. Narrated by seventh-grader Russell, the story is set in fictional Parkland Middle School, which is called “Darkland” by its students because of the ways that powerful kids abuse those who are having trouble fitting in. Three of those latter kids — Russell, his dinosaur-obsessed friend Elliot, and Catalina, a new student from the Philippines — discover they can use the school’s new computer network, on which every student has an account, to make the whole school look at true stories of how kids are getting treated. This turns Parkland inside out, until a shrewd retaliation by the powerful kids shuts everything down. Russell is sure all is lost, until one night ... he gets an idea.

True Shoes picks up the Revealers story a year later. Now, in eighth grade, a group of “tiptop popular” girls has become expert at using the forwarded text message to spread rumors, whether true or false — and everyone at Darkland knows the girls can use this tool to destroy anyone’s reputation, virtually overnight. Russell, Elliot and their motley friends get into a rising conflict with this group that pits creative, mostly positive uses of the Internet and smartphones (for example, posting a young filmmaker’s report about these rumors on YouTube) against the full range of emerging cyberbullying behaviors. An ensemble story just like The Revealers, True Shoes deals with a variety of issues, including a controlling dating relationship that is becoming abusive — but at its heart is the realistic tension between the positive and negative, creative and cruel, ways in which young people are choosing to use networked communication power in their lives.