Glog - Freak The Mighty

Let's face it - everybody needs a best friend. A person in your life that keeps you laughing, shares your secrets, and helps you through the tough times. True friends can be themselves around each other. With a best friend you can express your feelings, and even make mistakes without fear of being judged.   A best friend believes in you even though you no longer believe in yourself. He brings the best out in you. This kind of friendship is hard to find. In fact, most people go through life and never find such a friend.  Kevin is this friend to Max. They are blessed to come across each other in Rodman Philbrick's must read novel, Freak the Mighty.

In this book Maxwell Kane, a large, slow, kind-hearted eighth grader, meets his new neighbor, Kevin Avery, an extremely intelligent physically disabled boy (nicknamed Freak), and the two become fast friends. Before Kevin entered Max's life, he was alone, lonely and frightened by life that he felt worthless and dumb. But that all changes when Max starts carrying Kevin on his shoulder - the two become Freak the Mighty - and set out on many grand adventures together conquering anything put in their path. The two run into trouble when Max's criminal father gets paroled and comes looking for Max. But Kevin teaches Max that with courage, hope, and brains he can confront his father with the truth. But as that problem gets resolved, Max is faced with losing his best friend as Kevin's health deteriorates. Max struggles with seeing the glass half empty rather than half full and becomes miserable, lonely and lifeless.   The reader is left wondering will Max learn from Kevin - the example in which he lived his life. Will he take responsibility for his own life and live it the best he can?

            Max's character makes an amazing transformation from trying to be invisible, avoiding his troubles, and hiding out in the "down under" to being a brave knight in King Arthur's court who takes on quests slaying dragons, monsters and evil knights due to the help of his best friend, Kevin .  He defeats the local bully, Tony D., at the pond, returns a stolen wallet to Loretta Lee, and confronts his father surrounding his mother's death. Again as a result of Kevin's influence. Max has to come out of his isolation and self-doubt in order to accomplish these feats. Through all of this Max begins to have hope and faith due to the influences of Kevin's unique view of the world, but his naiveté gets the better of him. Faced with the overwhelming and devastating death of his best friend, Max became depressed and starts to fade back to being invisible. It was not until Loretta Lee told him that doing nothing was a drag that Max realized the unvanquished truth about himself. Kevin was right - he did have a brain and so he wrote their story - Freak the Mighty.

Kevin carries around a dictionary, and frequently has Max look up words he doesn't understand. By doing this, Kevin lets Max know that he isn't as dumb as he or others think he is and that by being curious about words he is learning to read and write. Later, when Kevin is dying in the hospital he gives Max a gift of an empty book and expects him to fill it with their adventures. This empty book represents Max at the beginning of the book - lifeless and apathetic. Max overcome with grief of Kevin's death and still believing he is slow or even brain-less doesn't at first accept the challenge. In fact, Max mopes around for a very long time until one day Grim, his grandfather, tells him that most people go through life never experiencing a friend like Kevin and that he was lucky to have him in his life.  With Loretta Lee's encouraging words, Max writes the book - Freak the Mighty.  It represents Max at his best - full of hope and possibilities.