Point of View

The entire book is told from Max Crumbly’s point of view. It is told in first person as he narrates the story. Sometimes the action is told as it is happening, and sometimes he is writing and drawing the flashbacks. Max is an unreliable narrator. He crosses out his true feelings and writes other, safer feelings instead. The reader can see through the cross-outs, so those feelings are never hidden.

Language and Meaning

Max speaks pretty much the way a typical middle school student would speak. At least, he speaks how the mother of high-school age girls thinks a middle school boy would speak. There is a lot of slang, and some of it is dated (“fly” meaning “cool,” for example.) And there are some references that a preteen would not know, such as the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up...