Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick (Scholastic, 1993) is a middle grade novel about two very opposite and different friends in middle school. Told from Max’s point of view, Freak the Mighty deals with concepts of a bullying for both Max, who is very large and struggles with learning difficulties, and for Kevin, nicknamed “the Freak” because of his physical disabilities combined with his superb intelligence. This unlikely friendship leads to a year of friendship as Kevin strengthens Max and vice-versa. Max is able to provide the transportation (walking) that Kevin cannot do for himself, and Kevin gives Max the confidence to use his brain to think things through and step outside of himself.
In addition to the concepts of bullying, the book also centers on questions of identity. Max is afraid to be himself because, as we learn throughout the book, his father is in jail because of violence. These details emerge bit by bit, so the horrific details of what Max has witnessed is something we, as reader, only realize as time passes. However, knowing what we know about PTSD nowadays, the fact that Kevin has difficult childhood memories really explains his reservations among others and his lack of engagement with life in general. Because of his experience, he has shut himself off from the world, assuming he’s not smart or even worth getting to know. But once Kevin is there on his shoulders, giving Max the feeling that there actually is a brain on his head, Max is able to see the world from a different perspective. Kevin teaches him to think. By the end of the book, Max is able to try things for himself and to recognize his own strengths, especially to recognize that he is not his father and that he is different. His future does not have to be the same as his father’s life.
The book comes full circle when, at the end, we discover that the book we have just read was an empty journal that “Freak” had given Max, and that Max has just used the journal to tell his unique story. Of course, with this type of first person account, it didn’t feel very realistic that this was the exact telling of events. Max claims to be learning disabled and says he’s never read a book, and now we’re reading a word-for-word retelling of his summer. This inauthentic voice to the novel was the only thing that stood out to me as insincere. As a whole, Freak the Mighty was a well-rounded novel about friendship, bullying, and figuring out self that seemed well placed in my middle schooler’s seventh grade English classroom. I recommend it for others that age too.
