Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

They don’t know but they're filled with pain so that they can’t talk about it and that keeps them from getting help. Because that’s how a lot of abused kids feel: it must be their fault. When you normalize this for one kid, that you’re not the only person this has happened to, you can understand that there's not something sincerely wrong with you.

It was definitely a very deliberate thing. Sometimes we get this sort of rosy idea of how children’s lives are and that’s not the reality for an awful lot of kids, so we need to be speaking to all of them.ĭella’s friend Nevaeh lends her a book that is important to her because it reflects her reality: “I was glad to know it didn’t only happen to me.” What are you hoping young readers will take away from Fighting Words? Clearly if you’re a child and you’re being abused by an adult, you don’t have any power in the situation and you’re not necessarily going to get the thing to stop without adults. And they don’t know how to stop it and they kind of don’t know that they’re allowed to. The book follows both the macro assault of what happened to Suki and Della at Clifton’s hands but also the micro assault with Trevor and the things that the girls are having to deal with in school. So I think if we start with YA we’re starting the conversation too late. Department of Justice, one in four girls and one in six boys will be abused by the time they’re 18. I think because I feel like we are starting the conversations with kids too late. Why was it important to you that Della, who is 10 and in fourth grade, and your audience, was middle grade?

The novel’s tough subject matter, which is unflinchingly handled, is frequently under the purview of young adult, not middle grade.

Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley