“My name is Maxwell Kane and the thing you should know about me is this: even though I’m a big dude with a face like the moon and ears that stick out like radar scoops and humongous feet like the abdominal snowman, inside I’m a real weenie. A yellow-bellied sapsucker. A gigantic wuss. A coward. I’ll do just about anything to avoid a fight. I’m scared if I hit somebody, they might stay hurt forever, or worse. And then they’d haul me off to prison and everybody would say what did you expect, the boy is a bad apple just like his jailbird father.”

Fourteen-year-old Max is huge for any age, and his family has a dark, violent history that everyone else believes has rubbed off on him. Every day, he faces suspicion and rejection; his biggest fear isn’t that he’ll be injured by others, but that he’ll fail his friends. It’s hard for him to get through his day without collapsing into depression. Besides introducing Max’s deepest fears about himself, this passage introduces his narrative voice, which is humble and honest and contains the occasional incorrect word (“abdominal snowman”) that shows he is younger and more naïve than his outward appearance suggests.

“Okay, maybe I am a little weird, but if you really think about it everybody is weird.”

Max ponders an important principle of life: Perhaps it’s not what others think of you but what you think of yourself that counts. In the story, Max’s journey involves a battle between the side of him that doubts himself and the side that yearns to use his strengths to help others in important ways.

“I like to stare at the way the sun glitters on the water, these jagged bits of light that float like diamonds or something, and if you look at it long enough you feel sort of hypnotized. Like somebody has cast a spell and when you wake up the world will be changed into a better place.”

The beauty of the day filters into Max’s mind, calming it and helping him forget his sorrows. A big kid with a sensitive soul, Max can’t help but enjoy the hypnotizing effects of the simple wonders of the world.