Spud Milton is the kind of fictional character you want to meet. Spud - a scholarship winner, cricket star, prefect at primary school - lives in South Africa.
Thirteen years old, all he wants to do is make sense of the confusing world around him. But the 'education' at the posh all-boys boarding school his parents have packed him off to only adds to Spud's problems.
John van de Ruit's Spud is a book for boys, or for girls brave enough to want to know what makes 13- and 14-year-old boys tick. Extracted from Spud's private diary, some of the entries could be considered unsuitable for pre-teen readers.
Be warned! It is 1990 and things are changing dramatically in South Africa. The country's president has legalised the once-banned African National Congress, and the black political leader Nelson Mandela has been released from prison.
Spud is aware of the massive political upheaval around him, but is more concerned with the turmoil in his immediate world. Strange creatures called girls have come into view.
Saddled with dysfunctional parents, a body that refuses to leave boyhood behind and some very odd school-mates, Spud is struggling to stay afloat. But, keeping his wits about him and confiding his innermost thoughts to his diary, Spud turns out to be a natural survivor and a very entertaining commentator on his own misadventures.
