Scars: Navigating Through Peer Pressure and Consequences of Actions

Scars is a compelling story about making the right decision, consequences, forgiveness, and part of Reflections Publishing's "Kids Helping Kids Through Books" series. Scars is written and illustrated by a parent/child team and eloquently describes how decisions that we make in our childhood can sometimes haunt us the rest of our life. By connecting with children through a fiction story written and illustrated by kids just like them, it simply provides a start for the healing process. Because true healing requires a broad focus on emotional, educational, social, and even spiritual needs, this series also provides a non-fiction section for children (and parents) with the tools they need to navigate through these situations. Specifically, at the back of each book in this series, readers will find commentaries for dealing with difficult situations from experts in various fields (e.g., child psychologists, educators, therapists, and religious scholars). We believe this series will provide children with valuable tools to assist them in dealing with many real-life challenges. Description of Scars: Will is buddies with all the kids in the neighborhood. When he and his group of friends allow a thirteen-year-old to become their power-hungry leader, there is trouble. The leader mobilizes the boys to become a battle-ready group that will ambush the leader's arch enemy, Allen. For Will, this is terrible news. Allen showed Will great kindness when Will first moved into the neighborhood, even taking him on an fun-filled adventure. How will he get out of fighting and hurting Allen without incurring the wrath of all his friends and their leader? Reviews: "Everyone struggles with peer pressure to conform to the ideas, actions and speech of others. As a current middle school teacher, I look for books that tackle the issues my students are experiencing since very often peer pressure robs them of their ability to make their own decisions. The book Scars tells the story of a young boy who was influenced by his friends and later in his life comes face to face with the results of his choices. I highly recommend this book along with the additional resources in the book to engage students in the discussion of peer pressure." - Jan Menconi, Educator and school administrator "A unique series for children, by children." -Booklist "Scars is an easy to read book demonstrating the internal conflict experienced by a person feeling pressured to 'conform' by making a decision just to go along with the group even though he believed the decision was a bad one. There are some decisions we make where we don't get second chances and though we may be forgiven, we can never undo what's been done. Scars confronts these issues in a very genuine, well written story." -Dr. Lewis Ribner, Clinical Psychologist