Wave

7.12.2015

Tod Strasser. A wave.
Moscow, Scooter: 2013

This story is based on real events that took place in a regular California school in the 1970s. The students told the teacher that Nazism was impossible now. In order to convey the childish principles of the functioning of the Nazi regime, history teacher Ben Ross creates the Wave movement. His ideology is based on formulas of obedience and discipline borrowed from Hitler's Germany. In just a few days, the school turns into a true totalitarian community, whose members are ready to follow their leader with appalling obedience. The situation is getting completely out of control, and Ben Ross no longer understands how to put an end to this madness.
The book can be discussed during extracurricular reading at school among children aged 14-16. You can talk about it in history and ethics classes. It can be recommended to a class that has signs of mobbing or bullying. The book is based on the film Experiment 2: The Wave, which is much tougher than the book. I recommend that parents and teachers watch it with their children and discuss it.

Writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya about the book:

“Catastrophic changes occur very quickly in a person's soul, and only culture can withstand the madness of fascism that can break out in the most seemingly prosperous society. An amazing, pessimistic experiment. An important warning.

File to download

Other articles

A niche for Katya Olina

Writer Daria Dotsuk shared with our website her story about child bullying, in which the story is told on behalf of a young persecutor.

8.2.2017

Isabelle Arseno, Fanny Britt. Jane, the fox and me

Being an outcast at school is very hard. Moreover, it is at school age that you most want to be part of something big, a member of a big group, a team... to feel that “together you are strong!”. But not everyone can be part of this team.

18.12.2015

Annika Thor. Truth or Consequences

A bold book for teenagers about things that are completely unromantic and shameful — about how the fear of ridicule from her classmates and the fear of losing her “social status” and becoming an outcast in her class pushes 12-year-old Nora to meanness.

18.12.2015

George Orwell's Animal Farm

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” Animal Farm

24.1.2015

“The volcano that was angry.” Working with a book

Dear parents! I would like to introduce you to Samokat's wonderful graphic book “The Volcano That Was Angry” (2020). The author of the text and drawings is Natalya Baiduzha, a designer and illustrator from Siberia. Age marking 0-3.4-6. I am very closely researching new children's books that raise the topic of aggression and bullying. And not all books appeal to me, and I don't want to talk about them all. But I immediately became interested in Vulcan, although it is for children of an age I don't work with. I looked at it carefully several times and figured out how parents or caregivers could “work” with her.

6.2.2021

Daria Nevskaya

Conrad Lorenz. Aggression

The scientist draws very interesting analogies between the behavior of different vertebrate species and Homo sapiens behavior, which is why the book was published in the “Library of Foreign Psychology” series. Claiming that aggressiveness is an innate, instinctively determined property all higher animals, and proving this with plenty of convincing examples, the author comes to the conclusion: “There are good reasons to consider intraspecific aggression is the most serious danger facing humanity in modern conditions of cultural, historical and technical development.”

30.1.2015

William Golding “Lord of the Flies”

The debut allegorical parabola novel by William Golding, an English writer and Nobel laureate in 1983, published in 1954.

21.1.2015

Children's books help children understand themselves

We read children's books while having fun and empathizing with the characters. But some good books for kids contain recognizable “case studies” that can and should be analyzed with children. A psychological children's book can become a child's friend.

9.4.2020

Daria Nevskaya