Book Summary and Reviews of Spud by John van de Ruit

Spud by John van de Ruit

Spud

by John van de Ruit

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2007, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

It’s 1990. Apartheid is crumbling. Nelson Mandela has just been released from prison. And Spud Milton—thirteen-year-old, prepubescent choirboy extraordinaire—is about to start his first year at an elite boys-only boarding school in South Africa. Cursed with embarrassingly dysfunctional parents, a senile granny named Wombat, and a wild obsession for Julia Roberts, Spud has his hands full trying to adapt to his new home.

Armed with only his wits and his diary, Spud takes readers of all ages on a rowdy boarding school romp full of illegal midnight swims, raging hormones, and catastrophic holidays that will leave the entire family in total hysterics and thirsty for more.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"In many ways Spud appears to be a literary cousin of Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson, whose diaries also detail, in colorful slang, life with whacked-out relatives, obsession with emergent sexuality and school-related capers." - Publishers Weekly, ages 12+

This information about Spud was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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More Information

Spud was published in South Africa in 2005 and became the fastest-selling novel by a South African in South African history, spending two years at the top of the bestseller list. A sequel to Spud, Spud: The Madness Continues is already available in South Africa and is planned for release in the USA in 2008.

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