#max einstein

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.

( Idk if ya’ll are ever interested in me talking about other stuff with a similar vibe here but if you need a good read I suggest the Max Einstein trilogy. 

Basically she’s a genius but is alot like George and Harold in her personality and actions, and her favorite quote is “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. I’ve only read the first and third book so far but she also comes off as having ADHD as well or and in the first book is even reprimanded for daydreaming and generally being unfocused at times. 

The first book sets up alot well with introduction and general character vibes, where she starts as an orphan squatter in New York and ends up getting recruited to be part of a team of geniuses that work to solve world problems in an anti-capitalist way. There isn’t much to warn about outside of slight fat shaming towards one of the kid geniuses though it’s not a large part of the story. 

I’ll probably read the second book tonight since I got these out of order, rip. 

Sorry if my rambling doesn’t quite make sense xd, it’s 2 am and I’ve gone down, a very deep rabbit hole tonight xd, i don’t remember how I got here honestly xd

it's all good!! tbh rn i can't remember much about max einstein, but i think it's an interesting concept! and yeah since the book's target audience isn't old enough to be on tumblr it's hard to find people on here (or people my age in general lol) who have read it 😅