Bullied boy’s book club has taken instagram by storm!

A teenage boy has become an Instagram sensation after his sister took to Twitter to complain about his bullies.

Thanks to empathetic Twitter followers, the 13-year-old form South Shields gained hundreds of thousands of followers for his Instagram account he used to talk about his favourite books.

Callum Manning, from South Shields , had started his Instagram page Cal’s Book Account so he could show his friends all books he has read and enjoyed (or not enjoyed so much!)

Unfortunately people began sending nasty and insulting messages to the group chat he joined at his new school, and Cal was left “devastated”.

“I don’t tend to cry that often but I think that was the first time in a while I’ve actually cried,” Callum told a news agency.

Cal’s sister, Ellis, posted a picture of Callum’s Instagram account on Twitter and wrote:

“Can’t believe how awful kids are. My little brother’s made an Instagram reviewing and talking about books and kids in his new school have seen it and have created a group chat calling him a creep slagging him off about it and added him to it so he could see.”

Ellis, 24, said she was hoping “20 or 30 of my friends (would) like a few of his posts or follow him or give him some words of encouragement”.

But within a few hours Cal had collected thousands of new followers as people who saw the tweet rushed to support him, including many booksellers, authors and writers, and some budding new writers who asked if Cal would mind reviewing their latest manuscript!

Excitingly, one of the authors who got in touch was one of Cal’s favourites- the author of You Caroline Kepnes.

“She’s one of my favourite authors – she texted us, which was really cool. Obviously I’m a really big fan so I was kind of nervous but that was really cool.”

By Sunday morning his follower count had surpassed 50,000, while shops, authors, publishers and members of the public were offering to send him more books to read and review.

“People saw it and people just thought ‘it’s not right’ because it isn’t,” Callum said. “Then I started getting loads of comments from everyone showing their support.

“I just think it’s really nice that there’s still people in the world who are nice.”

Show Cal how nice the Reading Addicts are and head over to show him some love at Cal’s Book Account on Instagram.