Max finds out that people are moving into the house next door. The new neighbors turn out to be Freak and his mother Gwen, who Freak calls "The Fair Gwen" after King Arthur's wife. The boys make friends. They go to the Fourth of July fireworks together, and puts Freak on his shoulders so he can see. The local tough guy, Tony D. "Blade", chases the two with his gang because Freak called him a cretin. With Max's size and speed and Freak's directions and master plan of running into the pond, they keep themselves safe until they are rescued by the police. After this incident, Freak starts riding on Max's shoulders. They call their combined form "Freak the Mighty". The friendship is good for them both; they stick up for each other and Kevin even teaches Max to read and learn properly. They go on adventures such as going to the hospital which Freak claims has a secret department called the "Bionics Department" which has had his brain cat scanned to be fitted into an artificial body. On one adventure they find a woman's purse in the sewer. They return it to the woman who is called Loretta Lee. Loretta is the wife of Iggy Lee, boss of the Panheads, a motorcycle gang who "struck fear in everyone, even the cops", as Max puts it. She loved to eat weird things like cowpie and a lot of disgusting things because that's how her gang was. Iggy says that the two of them once knew Max's father. They want to "have some fun" with the boys but change their minds because they are afraid that Max's father will get angry. They are afraid of Max's father even though he's serving a life sentence. They also reveal that Kevin's father left once he heard his son had a birth defect.
At school, Freak nearly dies when he chokes after eating American chop suey. Max alerts the nurse. Freak is taken to the hospital. Later, Grim reveals to Max that his father has been let out on parole. Throughout the story, it has been slowly revealed that Max's father killed his mother by strangling her, and that Grim and Gram hate him and are afraid of Max ending up like him. Max is shocked and scared by the news of his father's parole. Freak returns from the hospital and the two celebrate Christmas Eve together. After Christmas Eve, Max is woken up by his father, Killer Kane, who has come to kidnap him. After Max is kidnapped by his father, the two drive to Iggy Lee's apartment in the "New Testaments" (really tenements). Killer Kane is even bigger than Max and acts in a very threatening, intimidating manner towards everyone, including his son, who he keeps tied up. Killer Kane swears on the Bible that he did not murder Max's mother. He also reveals that he plans to head to "warmer weather" and be a con man. At night he leaves Max alone, tied up in a room in the apartment of an old lady on vacation. Loretta, shocked that Kane would do something like that to his own child, tries to help him escape. Killer Kane catches her and starts to strangle her. Max attempts to stop him and reveals that he witnessed his father kill his mother in the same fashion. Kane gives up on training Max to be his obedient assistant and tries to kill him, but Freak arrives just in time and saves Max by squirting Kane with a squirt gun he claims is filled with sulfuric acid when in fact, it is filled with soap, vinegar, and curry powder. The police are waiting outside, and Killer Kane goes back to prison, this time until he's an old man.
In the spring after the attack, Kevin celebrates his and Freak the Mighty's birthday. Soon after, Freak dies in the hospital after telling Max to record all of their adventures. Max goes crazy when he hears the news and is furious at the doctors for promising Kevin a robotic body to save him. The doctor explains that that was just a story Kevin told himself, and he always knew he was going to die young. He looked up his condition in a medical dictionary (Freak loved words and carried a dictionary around all the time). Max mourns Freak for weeks and won't stop. With Loretta Lee's encouragement, Max eventually starts to heal and writes a book about the adventures of Freak the Mighty, in accordance with Freak's final wishes.
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler (born February 28, 1970) is the real name of Lemony Snicket, author of the popular "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books. He graduated from Lowell High School and from Wesleyan University in 1992. He is a native of San Francisco and went to the San Francisco Boys Chorus. He calls himself the fake name of Lemony Snicket in the books, as well as in Lemony's autobiography. The autobiography is listed as fiction. After several years of writing the books, Daniel let the public know that he was behind the name of Lemony Snicket.
He is married to Lisa Brown and had their first child, Otto, in October of 2003. He finished 13 books to complete the Series of Unfortunate Events.
It is also believed by some people that his wife, author and illustrator Lisa Brown could possibly be the "Beatrice" that Handler writes his books for.
Global warming
Global warming is the temperature of Earth's surface, oceans and atmosphere going up over ten to thousands of years. Average temperatures today are about higher than before people started burning a lot of coal around 1750. But in some parts of the world it is less than this and some more. Most climate scientists say that by the year 2100 temperatures will be to higher than they were before 1750. The changes people can see most easily is because of this increase in temperature is the melting of ice caps all around the world. Sea level is rising for two reasons. One reason is because of ice on the land, like Greenland, melting into the sea. The other reason is because of water getting bigger when it gets warmer. Many cities will be partly flooded by the ocean in the 21st century.
Global warming is mostly because of people burning things, like gasoline to make cars go and natural gas to keep houses warm. But the heat from the burning itself only makes the world a tiny bit warmer: it is the carbon dioxide from the burning which is the biggest part of the problem. Among the greenhouse gases, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main cause of global warming, as predicted by Svante Arrhenius a hundred years ago, confirming the work of Joseph Fourier more than 200 years ago. When people burn fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas this adds carbon dioxide into the air. This is because fossil fuels contain lots of carbon and burning means joining most of the atoms in the fuel with oxygen. When people cut down many trees (deforestation), this means less carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere by those plants.
As the Earth's surface temperature becomes hotter the sea level becomes higher. This is partly because water over expands when it gets warmer. It is also partly because warm temperatures make glaciers and ice caps melt. The sea level rise causes coastal areas to flood. Weather patterns, including where and how much rain or snow there is, are changing. Deserts will probably increase in size. Colder areas will warm up faster than warm areas. Strong storms may become more likely and farming may not make as much food. These effects will not be the same everywhere. The changes from one area to another are not well known.