Scrawl Reviewed By Sasha Dilawri

Scrawl written by Mark Shulman is a fiction novel which takes place inside a junior high school. The main character in this novel is Tod Munn. His problem is that he gets into a lot of trouble and he must serve a detention everyday. This story takes place in a small, dirty and warm junior high school in Buffalo, New York. Throughout the story Tod’s adventure keeps getting more and more exiting.


Tod Munn is a bully. Scrawl follows Tod’s footsteps in and outside of school. Tod is a reckless and stubborn thirteen year old boy. Tod is actually a very smart kid but he plays being a thug. After Tod does something very, very bad, he must spend his after school hours in a hot detention room writing in a notebook. Tod is a bully because of his situation at home. The reason Tod bullies kids is because he needs money. He beats kids up than he takes their money. His parents are divorced and he is obligated to help his mother at her job because they are poor. His mother sews clothing for a living. Tod helps her because he starts to see that this job doesn’t make enough money for a family to live on. Tod’s house is very hard to live in because it is very small and has low supplies like food and light. Tod's behavior slowly develops throughout the story as he is learning life’s lessons daily in the hot detention room. During the second half of the book Tod starts to develop new relationships with new people. This helps Tod’s social development. At the very end of the story he takes part in a school play. The school play shows everyone that Tod is a different person than he was at the start of the book. At the start of the book Tod does not show any hope. At the start of the book Tod is a misunderstood character. As the story goes on you start to see more and more hope in Tod.


The author successfully presented the conflict in this novel. The author did a great job delivering the conflict to the reader because the author threw in some twists and turns. He did this well when Tod was spending his time in the detention room. He also did this at the start of the book when Tod was a misunderstood character and he had no hope. At times the central idea was unclear because the story was about the adventure of one character. This story made me think about the consequences you can get for doing something really bad. Scrawl was a very captivating and engaging novel. Overall, Scrawl was a remarkable, moving book that I would highly recommend.