Freak the Mighty
novel by Rodman Philbrick
Freak the Mighty is a young adult novel by Rodman Philbrick. Published in 1993, it was followed by the novel Max the Mighty in 1998. The primary characters are friends Maxwell Kane, a large, developmentally disabled, and kind-hearted boy, and Kevin Avery, nicknamed "Freak", who is physically disabled and very intelligent. Kevin has Morquio syndrome.
The novel was adapted for the screen under the title The Mighty by Charles Leavitt; the film was shot in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Cincinnati, Ohio, and directed by Peter Chelsom, and released in 1998.
Plot
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Maxwell Kane is a young boy who lives with his grandparents, Grim and Gram. People are afraid of Max because he looks like his father, convicted murderer Kenneth "Killer" Kane. Max reminisces about his time in daycare, when he met a boy named Kevin (or Freak, as their classmates called him). Kevin has Morquio syndrome, wears leg braces and uses crutches, thinks of himself as a robot, and is bullied by bigger kids due to his short height.
Years later, when Max is in middle school, he learns that Freak and his mother, Gwen, referred to as "The Fair Guinevere", are moving into the house next door.
The public source identifies “Freak the Mighty” as novel by Rodman Philbrick. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Freak, Mighty and novel.
Why this record matters
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5494209. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1993 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Freak the Mighty” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.