Lucy, a charmingly photogenic doll, narrates this account of the physical abuse a nine-year-old girl suffers at the hands of mean-spirited children. Jones’s books are consciousness-raising material. This one is endorsed by Meg Hickling, an R.N. and sexual health educator, and by an impressive number of organizations, including the B.C. Ministry of Education.

The Lucy Doll is a serious story about Lucy’s owner, Delphine, a bullied child whose behaviour ranges from accommodation, rationalization, and justification to misdirected blame, transferred anger, and uncharacteristic acting out. It is only after a bully breaks Lucy’s hand that Delphine finally tells her mother about the siege she and her toys are under. By story’s end, Delphine has found enough self-esteem to successfully stand up to her tormentor.

At first look, the picture book format of The Lucy Doll seems an unusual choice for its intended Grade 3 to Grade 7 audience. However, Jones, whose photography illustrates the book, uses Lucy as an arms-length stand-in for Delphine. Pictures of Lucy, beginning with the book’s cover photo of a doll with pink Band-Aids on her chin and neck, reinforce the story’s impact. As they turn pages, readers will note Lucy’s increasing number of Band-Aids and physical deterioration.

While it has several proofreading oversights (e.g., speghetti), introduces words (i.e., dorfulled, glompy) that haven’t yet made it into this reviewer’s dictionaries, and will need binding reinforcement for school, public library, and social services use, The Lucy Doll is a book with its heart in the right place. Fans of the button art illustration featured in Jones’s previous books will marvel at more of it here.