#max e

[maxtothemax]

if i had a nickel for every time james patterson put out a book series about a girl named max and she had to save the world from climate change in the 4th book, i'd have two nickels. which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[maxtothemax]

the absolute AUDACITY of james patterson to insist that all of his characters are straight/cis.

you're telling me that max einstein, 12 year old genius who spends most of her time thinking about science and albert einstein quotes, has any space in her head for boys?? get the FUCK out of here.

[maxtothemax]

just to dash anyone's hopes that i was gonna stop doing this

[maxtothemax]

i’d love to hear the longer tangent about rich people in Patterson’s books

ok SO

we all know there’s the whole thing with nino pierpont, the flock’s mysterious rich “sponsor” or whatever, in maximum ride. that one was just kind of a bullshit explanation as to how the flock was able to have multiple different houses when each location got compromised, able to travel places, how the island at the end of nevermore existed, etc. it was just a convenient excuse.

but another series of his i’ve read is max einstein. i was going to make more posts about it, it’s just that it was.... honestly pretty mediocre. i was disappointed by the ending of the series, since the “big reveal” was pretty much completely revealed in the prologue of the final book.

[this next part will contain spoilers, but i sort of assume no one here cares that much about this series, so]

if you don’t know about max einstein, it’s about this girl named, uh, max einstein, a homeless 12-year-old genius. in the first book, she gets picked up by these people from “the change maker’s institute,” which is sponsored by a mysterious “benefactor” who wanted to gather up child geniuses to get them to improve the world through problem-solving things like the clean water crisis and world hunger. the catch is that the “benefactor” is actually a 14 year old boy named ben, who’s a fucking billionaire.

basically his parents died (unspecified how), and he was, for some reason, left to do whatever he wanted with their money. he decided to found the CMI to improve the world, etc.

the villains of this series work for a company called “the corp.” it’s basically run by a group of very rich, powerful people who want to become more rich and powerful. (which is pretty reminiscent of those “the world is run by a group of powerful elites” conspiracy theories, which... isn’t a good thing to be exposing kids to, even through fiction.) basically, they’re a bunch of cartoon villains motivated by greed. and greed is bad and evil, obviously.

but there’s absolutely no nuance to how ben is portrayed as a “good” rich person, and all the other rich people are bad. there’s no discussion of how, to become a billionaire, you must exploit workers. and that wouldn’t be ben’s fault, really, bc it’s his parents’ money, but that just means his parents exploited workers, and he was presumably shaped by their morals. ben spends a lot of money, but there’s no discussion of where this money comes from or how he acquires more of it. although we don’t really get a glimpse into his personal life, judging by his private jets and his taste in food, he lives a pretty extravagant lifestyle.

ben is pretty much a walking plot device (and also a love interest for max, ew) but the way he’s portrayed gives off a “not all rich people” vibe. “yes all the villains in this are rich, but not all rich people are villains,” says james patterson, who is a millionaire.

these books have a younger target audience, so i’m really curious to see, in five years, what all the younger folks who read this think about it.

[maxtothemax]

i keep having the evil thought that if i just rewrote max einstein from memory and took a ton of artistic liberties, i'd probably end up with a pretty decent middle grade novel

[maxtothemax]

i know no one else cares about max einstein but i've been spinning it around in my head. which elements of these books could i steal to make a better and, more importantly, completely insane middle grade novel?

[maxtothemax]

i've been debating whether to subject you all to my max einstein obsession again but then i realized you all voluntarily followed my blog and i can do whatever i want

SO

honestly i don't even know what to say, i just wanna write a version of max einstein that deals more with her own emotional turmoil, has themes of "eat the rich," possibly explores why the "child genius" label is problematic, etc.

it would be very different from the original but, by virtue of being different, it would be a LOT better. i don't wanna do the whole white savior trope shit that was going on in those books, i want these kids to realize that it's not THEIR responsibility to save the world!! bc the books vastly oversimplify a lot of the world's problems in order to do that, and it's just. not good. i'd rather focus in on the characters and what's going on with them.

[maxtothemax]

so unfortunately i'm actually invested in rewriting max einstein, even though no one else is interested in it, so catch me planning a rewrite of that once my semester ends