Tod, with one D.

Scrawl was a great book! I just don't understand why the kid's names of Tod instead of Todd. I am sure there are a lot of Tods out there, I just have never met one.

My dear friend Kara recommended Scrawl because her lovely teen daughter recommended it to her and I finished this baby in very little time.

Tod is a bully, but not the kind of bully I ever knew in school. He runs with a crew of four: Rex, Rob and Bernie are his "droogs" as he calls them. His crew is into petty theft and making mischief. And Tod is called a bully and he does bully kids- breaks their glasses, extorts money from them, scares them just by looking at them, etc. Tod is different from bullies I've known in real life because Tod gets bullied by his classmates, too. I mean, I have known bullies who get bullied at home, and by teachers and bullies who get bullied by other people on the streets, but in schools, I never knew a bully who also got picked on by other kids in the same school. I felt a lot of sympathy for Tod. The kids who bully him seem like super-jerks. And it seems that they bully him mostly because Tod is smart and that bugs them. Tod is smart, really smart.

So the book is a journal- not a diary, as Tod insists- he must write in this journal in detention for something that he and his crew did (you find out at the end of the book what it was). Sometimes the social worker will make comments in the journal, but mostly it is Tod, writing about his life at home and at school and how he deals with his poverty and his anger.

Really, really, really different and good book. Highly recommended.