In chapter 13, Maxwell, the narrator of the story, describes Freak's efforts to help him improve his reading and writing skills. Maxwell struggles especially with writing. He says that when he tries to write, his hand "feels so huge and clumsy" and that the pencil he tries to write with feels like "a piece of spaghetti ... and ... keeps slipping away."
Freak tries to help Maxwell by suggesting that he think of writing as just "like talking." This seems to be good advice. Indeed, many people who struggle with writing struggle because they think that their writing needs to be overly formal and stylized. When Freak tries to convince Maxwell that writing is "like talking," he is trying to get Maxwell to simply write as he speaks and not overthink what he writes. Despite this good advice, however, Maxwell still struggles when it comes to writing.
Maxwell has much...
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more success when it comes to overcoming his difficulties with reading. Freak again gives him good advice. When describing reading, Freak tells Maxwell to think of it as "just a way of listening." This is a good description, because if, when reading, you can imagine the words being spoken, then reading does indeed become another form of listening, and everybody can listen. Indeed, Maxwell responds well to Freak's description of reading because he says he "could always listen." Freak builds on this description of reading when he says that Maxwell should think of the words on the pages as "just voices on paper."
In Philbrick's Freak the Mighty, how does Freak describe reading and writing?
In Philbrick's Freak the Mighty, Maxwell has a difficult time learning, so his grandparents sign him up for the resource classes. When Freak discovers that his big friend is not as skilled at reading and writing as he is, he jumps to the task of teaching him. Freak starts out by telling Max stories such as those of King Arthur and his knights. There are words in Freak's daily speech that Max doesn't understand, though. Freak then decides that Max needs to learn to break words down into parts and how to look them up in a dictionary for his own personal edification. At Christmas Freak constructs his own dictionary with his favorite words as a gift for Max. Everything that Freak teaches him really sinks in because of how much he believes in Max.
Then, when Max is allowed to join Freak in his smart classes, the teachers demand a lot from him. Freak tells him not to worry because he will help him through every assignment. Max does his best to learn what Freak teaches him, but what he remembers most is the following:
"Like Freak says, reading is just a way of listening, and I could always listen, but writing is like talking, and that's a whole other ball game" (82).
This helps to simplify things in Max's mind. Max can easily listen just as well as he can talk. If he simply transfers these skills to reading and writing, his academic abilities should develop more quickly.