Max the Mighty

Published in 1998, Rodman Philbrick’s Max the Mighty is a novel for middle grade and young adult readers. The sequel to the award-winning book Freak the Mighty, it continues the story of Max Kane, a giant of a 14-year-old who rescues book-loving schoolmate Rachel from her abusive stepfather, after which she and Max go on the run from the authorities.

Max the Mighty won a place on the National Council of Teachers of English annual annotated booklist and was nominated for two other prizes. Author Philbrick has won many other awards, including a Newbery Honor. The ebook version of the first edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Content Warning: The story contains a brief incident of domestic violence.

Plot Summary

Max Kane is very large for a young teen, and people fear him both for his size and for being the son of a murderer. Still mourning the death of his best friend, Keven Avery—a genius boy with a lethal childhood disease that prevented his bones from growing—Max helps a classmate, Rachel, retrieve her backpack from a gang member who steals it to torment her. In the backpack are her books and a miner’s helmet with a light that she uses to read at night. Because she always has her head in a book, everyone calls her Bookworm, or Worm for short.

At the park, Rachel sits with Max and talks about her love of the book The Wind in the Willows, which her father used to read to her. Rachel’s mom sits nearby and worries about her daughter’s huge friend, but Rachel reassures her. An old hearse rolls up, and a tall, skinny man dressed in black, the Undertaker, steps out and demands that Rachel and her mom return home at once. As they leave, Rachel slips her copy of The Wind in the Willows into Max’s coat pocket.

Max finds Rachel’s home address inside the book. He goes to her basement apartment in a poor part of town, where he overhears the Undertaker beating Rachel’s mother into unconsciousness. Max breaks in, retrieves Rachel, and escapes with her. He tries to get her to his house, but the Undertaker and the police are already there, telling his grandparents that Max knocked out Rachel’s mother and kidnapped Rachel.

She and Max decide to escape to Montana, where her father can help her. The bus station is watched by the police, so they hitchhike and catch a ride on a wildly painted school bus driven by an old hippie named Dip. He seems to understand that they’re good people in trouble. As they cross the US, they meet a couple, Frank and Joanie, whom the others quickly realize are down-on-their-luck fraudsters. Dip takes pity on them and brings them aboard, but the kids understand they shouldn’t take Frank and Joanie into their confidence.

Frank learns from a newspaper that there’s a big reward for catching Max. He and Joanie bring the police to the bus, but Max escapes with Rachel. They hop a freight train, where they meet Hobo Joe, a friendly, scrawny young man who keeps them fed and helps them find their way to Rachel’s father by way of railroad cars.

They arrive at an abandoned mining town named Chivalry, where her dad lives. Rachel finds the entrance to a mine and calls out to him, asking for advice. Max realizes that her father died in a mine accident. The local sheriff tries to capture the kids, but they escape into the tunnel. Hours later, they find their way through the dangerously unstable maze of mineshafts and out a side entrance, where they find Dip and Max’s grandfather awaiting them. The sheriff and the Undertaker intercept them, but Rachel runs back into the mine.

Max chases her and finds her standing in the darkness at the edge of a deep mine shaft. She says the Undertaker is bound to win, and she doesn’t believe in Max the Mighty anymore. She says goodbye, and her helmet’s light tumbles down into the shaft. A moment later, she’s standing by Max: She says she gave the helmet to her dead father so he can find his way.

As they climb out of the mine, a tunnel brace falls and pins the Undertaker. In front of the sheriff, Rachel gets him to admit he struck her mom. The tunnel system begins to collapse, but Max lifts the brace from the Undertaker, and Max’s grandfather pulls the injured man to safety. Max, though, gets buried.

He wakes in a hospital with some broken bones. Rachel’s mother testifies against the Undertaker, who gets a long prison term. Rachel and her mom move in with Max and his grandparents, and Rachel becomes like a sister to Max.