I teach karate to kids and started taking lessons myself when I was in the 5th Grade, just like the protagonist in "A Bundle of Sticks," Ben Tyler. So naturally I felt an affinity to this book when I stumbled across its description on Amazon.com. This connection was strengthened when I discovered that the book was first published in 1982, the year I began my karate lessons. So I can't help but feel that Ben and I are contemporaries.

Ben Tyler is a kid who, while athletic and outgoing, does not like to fight. Unfortunately the school bully, Boyd Bradshaw, does like to fight, or at least to physically humiliate those smaller than him. Ben's aversion to fighting is an irresistible attraction for Boyd to bully, harass, goad, and beat up our hero.

Displeased to see his son being a doormat for a schoolyard thug, Ben's father encourages Ben to check out some self-defense classes. Ben is not interested. He does not want to take classes in something he has no interest in doing - fighting. Ben's mom, who is something of a, well, mom, doesn't think fighting classes are right for her Ben, either. But Mr Tyler prevails upon his wife and son to give it a try.

They check out a local martial arts school where Ben reluctantly begins to attend classes. After meeting Sifu (a Chinese term used to address one's instructor in the art of Kajukenbo) and an adult student who becomes a big brother figure, Ben begins to feel that this martial arts stuff is kind of neat, though he adamantly maintains his aversion to fighting.

With time, practice and patience, Ben improves his basic techniques and is even called upon by Sifu to help a less coordinated kid who starts taking classes and who becomes Ben's junior training brother and friend.

There is so much praiseworthy about this book that I am certain I will neglect some aspect that really touched me as I read it. Most of all, this isn't a story about a kid who gets beat up, takes some martial arts lessons, then beats up the bully and The End.

McCord's sensitivity to the challenges of being a 10-year-old boy in the preadolescent schoolroom milieu is so spot-on that reading this book would have taken me back to my own boyhood whether I had ever studied martial arts or not. McCord does not shy away from what its really like in adversarial schoolyard settings.

Intriguingly, the title "A Bundle of Sticks" refers to the dictionary definition of the word "faggot," an epitaph thrown around commonly in 5th Grade classrooms as a way to demean boys who do not live up to -or are accused of not living up to- some arbitrary male ideal. I know from memory that -at least as far back as 30 years ago- this particular epithet has been the awed and revered "nuclear option" in the verbal arsenal of 5th Graders.

Ben's teacher makes Boyd look the word up in the class dictionary and find its true definition after Boyd calls Ben this name in class for refusing to fight. Uncovering the true meaning of this word deprives it of its power to intimidate just as the scene in which Boyd fumbles awkwardly through the dictionary has a similar effect on the class bully turned dunce.

As sensitively as the author's handling of the issues of physical and psychological bullying is her treatment of Ben's first crush. A young, pretty substitute teacher, Miss Fletcher subs for Ben's normal teacher for the last few weeks of the school year. Like Ben, she must learn to deal with the sometimes hostile environment of the classroom.

Ben, who is skeptical at first, watches Miss Fletcher establish herself as the new authority in the classroom, with her own rules and her own style. Ben also discovers that Miss Fletcher is willing to talk with him about his problems with Boyd without launching into rehearsed lectures or generic diatribes about how bullies must be handled. She is willing to listen and to afford Ben the dignity of an individual dealing with his own challenges and needing to talk to someone who can legitimately sympathize.

Miss Fletcher is impressed with the integrity Ben shows by refusing to be drawn into fighting for fighting's sake, and can empathize with the difficulties he faces in Boyd and the mob of appeasers who engage in passive bullying for fear that Boyd's wrath will turn on them.

For his part, Ben is impressed with Miss Fletcher's ability to tame the classroom and the respect she shows him as an individual, neither haranguing him for being a pushover (as his father does), nor babying him and undermining his emerging masculinity by being overprotective (as his mother does).

Grateful for the ally he has found in Miss Fletcher, Ben forms a bond with the young teacher, and a little crush on her as well.

Of course the time does come when Ben finally has to confront Boyd, and - just like Sifu told him would happen - Ben finds that he just instinctively knows what to do.

I cannot say enough to recommend this book (as I discovered while writing this review). Having read this book only one time I feel that Ben Tyler is a childhood friend of mine and fellow martial artist for whom I have the greatest respect. ( )