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Overview
Tod Munn is a bully. He’s tough, but times are even tougher. The wimps have stopped coughing up their lunch money. The administration is cracking down. Then to make things worse, Tod and his friends get busted doing something bad. Something really bad.
Lucky Tod must spend his daily detention in a hot, empty room with Mrs. Woodrow, a no-nonsense guidance counselor. He doesn’t know why he’s there, but she does. Tod’s punishment: to scrawl his story in a beat-up notebook. He can be painfully funny and he can be brutally honest. But can Mrs. Woodrow help Tod stop playing the bad guy before he actually turns into one . . . for real?
Read Tod’s notebook for yourself.
Editorials
From the Publisher
“Scrawl is the rare novel written from the bully’s point of view. . . . It’s useful to point out that much can hide under a hardened exterior.” —Los Angeles Times
“There’s something special about this book. . . . It’s all put together so pleasingly, with punch and wit and smarts, and in such a way that the events and characters stay with you.” —PW.com “Shelf Talker” blog
“A memorable debut.” —Kirkus Reviews
“With the potential to occupy the rarified air of titles like S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Chris Crutcher’s Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Scrawl paints the stereotypical school bully in a different, poignant light.” —VOYA
“Readers seeking an unflinching look at high-school politics from the perspective of the disenfranchised will find in Tod an illuminating guide.” —BCCB
“Tod has a real way with words (the way he crashes, then dominates the spelling bee is priceless). . . . Shulman establishes a nice voice for him, as Tod rips jokes so dry they can float away and shows some real heart dealing with his less-than-desirable lot in life. . . . An unusual sort of bully redemption story.” —Booklist
“In a unique version of a story told in journal format, the writing Tod does in detention becomes this book. . . . Through his own words, the reader grows to love this hard-edged character. . . . Tod’s voice is natural and consistent. Shulman captures the viewpoint of a believable eighth grader, while conveying Tod’s maturity and sharp sense of humor. Tod’s backstory is seamlessly woven into his narrative. This book will engage a wide audience, but it will appeal most strongly to junior high school boys, particularly those who may be bored by schoolwork or have trouble finding books that interest them.” —Children’s Literature
“This is a different take on the bully story. It lets the readers inside the mind of a bully and see the reasoning for his actions. The story is true to life, funny, and shows that people who are seen as troublemakers can change. . . . Highly recommended.” —Library Media Connection
Publishers Weekly
Shulman (Mom and Dad Are Palindromes) makes his YA debut with the story of Tod, a school bully forced to spend detention writing in a journal. Tod's latest crime was breaking into school with his buddies to steal a video camera, but he has a long history of beating up kids for their lunch money and destroying property. He's also a superb student, hiding his good grades behind his rough demeanor. As he writes, details of his home life emerge. Tod's house is barely habitable, and he is forced to help his mother in her job as a seamstress to make ends meet. His bullying is often less about wanting to hurt other kids than genuinely needing money, although he doesn't show much remorse. There's little that hasn't been done before--the overly smart bully with a troubled home life is a standard trope--but Shulman throws in some nice twists and gives Tod a strong, solid voice. Even the inevitable ray of hope doesn't fully distract from the bleakness of Tod's life. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)VOYA -
Tod Munn is not a typical bully. Forced to write in a notebook because, in his words, he is "being reformed," Tod's diary entries, written to his school guidance counselor, chronicle his "fundraising activities," interactions with his "droogs" Rex, Rob and Bernie, and his slow road to redemption that begins with him crashing the school spelling bee and ends with him secretly supplying costumes for the school play. The notebook reveals an outwardly-hardened, inwardly-sensitive teen wrestling with the pull of loyalty to friends and fear of the future while just trying to survive the next week of school. As Tod begins to see that he might have a future beyond his hardscrabble neighborhood, a series of betrayals by those closest to him sets off a dangerous chain of events. Tod's journal attempts to answer the question, "How can anybody scrawl his story when he doesn't have anything to say?" Scrawl is at times hilarious, sarcastic, and angsty—a present-day Lord of the Flies (Capricorn Books, 1959) with the pathos and introspection of My So-Called Life (Random House Books for Young Readers, 1995). Blackmail, cliques, and a sense of hopelessness from both students and teachers sets up an unexpected ending that will leave readers with a new appreciation for how difficult high school can be. With the potential to occupy the rarified air of titles like S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders and Chris Crutcher's Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (Greenwillow Books, 1993/VOYA October 1993), Scrawl paints the stereotypical school bully in a different, poignant light. Reviewer: Jay WiseChildren's Literature -
Tod Munn is used to being in trouble. The money situation at home has his mom stressed out, and in their small house, he is usually in his stepfather's way. At school, he is a bully, but he gets good grades without being anything like the ideal student. His current punishment, though, is unlike any he has had before. When he and his friends are caught on school property and accused of theft and vandalism, his friends spend their detention doing maintenance on the school grounds. Tod is sentenced to write his story in a stuffy classroom with the guidance counselor, Mrs. Woodrow. In a unique version of a story told in journal format, the writing Tod does in detention becomes this book. Mrs. Woodrow's comments are included, adding insight and revealing Tod's relationships with the guidance counselor and the broader school community. Through his own words, the reader grows to love this hard-edged character. He writes about his daily life, but his stories about finding costumes for the upcoming drama production and his frustrations with a student who actively works to humiliate him online gradually reveal his side of the conflict that led to his detention. Tod's voice is natural and consistent. Shulman captures the viewpoint of a believable eighth-grader, while conveying Tod's maturity and sharp sense of humor. Tod's back story is seamlessly woven into his narrative. This book will engage a wide audience, but it will appeal most strongly to junior high school boys, particularly those who may be bored by schoolwork or have trouble finding books that interest them. Reviewer: Jennifer LehmannSchool Library Journal
Gr 7 Up—"I know what you think. You think I'm fixable, don't you? You want to fix the bad guy." Readers slowly learn what makes Tod, a self-confessed bully, tick by reading the notebook he writes in (not, he insists, a journal) during after-school detention. He is supervised by Mrs. Woodrow, the guidance counselor, for a school break-in with his buddies (droogs), who increasingly resent that he's gotten this cushy punishment while they are consigned to clean the school grounds. Tod is no dummy. He reads, does his homework, and gets good grades. But he's poor. His mom, a seamstress, does alterations for a dry cleaners (Tod helps), and he tries to stay away from her husband, whom he describes as "unpredictable." Lacking money for basic necessities like food and clothes, he extorts it from "losers" at school and otherwise tries to keep a fairly low profile. The plot is thin, as Tod gets roped into providing the costumes for a school play written and produced by "that spooky goth girl Luz Montoya." Still, he is a funny, quirky, interesting character. There are loose ends, but in the end it's not so much what happened, as the fun of getting there, finding out whether Tod is right or not when he writes, "I'm a loser, okay? I was born a loser and I'll live a loser and I'll die a loser. And nothing you do here is going to ever change that."—Joel Shoemaker, formerly at South East Junior High School, Iowa City, IAKirkus Reviews
Tod Munn is in trouble for breaking into school and vandalizing school property. Previously, he's taken kids' lunch money, broken eyeglasses, intimidated weaker kids. He's the stereotypical school bully. Or is he? His friends have been sentenced by the disciplinary committee to endless hours of cleanup duty, but Tod, for some reason, is sent to daily detention with Mrs. Woodrow, the guidance counselor and former English teacher, where his punishment is to write several pages per day in a composition notebook. And despite his handwriting, his scrawl, his prose is quite good, raising the question, early on, of how a thug like Tod could be such a literate writer, let alone have read Moby-Dick, Oliver Twist and A Clockwork Orange. But this novel-as-journal isn't just the author's conceit; Tod's writing skill, his clear prose and natural voice, makes sense as readers get to know him through his journal, in which he describes himself and his world and proves that maybe he's more than a "ghetto juvenile delinquent," which is just what Mrs. Woodrow had suspected. A memorable debut. (Fiction. 12 & up)