Freak the Mighty

By Rodman Philbrick

"Killer Kane, Killer Kane, had a kid who got no brain!"

That's what they used to yell at me, and then they'd run like crazy because I'm the spitting image of my bad old dad. Or so they say. I never gave it a lot of thought beause basically it was easier to act brainless, and when you're as big as I am, people believe it. Even my mother's people, Grim and Gram, even they were afraid of me.

Everything changed when Freak moved into the neighborhood. Little dude about two feet tall, he was smarter than Einstein, so smart he wrote his own dictionary, and invented flying machines, and discovered buried treasure, and the weird thing is, he wasn't afraid of me. No way, he was too smart for that.

Okay, so Freak was a genius, but was I really as dumb as I looked? You better believe it. I never had a brain until Freak came along because there were certain things I didn't want to remember. Bad things, terrible things.

Later, when we started having our adventures, slaying dragons and fools and walking high above the world, it was Freak himself who taught me that remembering is a great invention of the ind, and if you try hard enough you can remember anything, whether is happened or not.

And that's the truth. The unvanquished truth. Like everything inside this book.

Okay, I picked this book up at the used book store, thinking it would be really good, because well I saw the movie and it was fantastic. This book apparently was one of the few exceptions (in my mind) that the movie was better. This is only the second book I've come across that I liked the movie better. So, instead of reading this, go rent the movie. It's really really good.