Max and the Millions

Product Information

It also does a nice job of outlining some basic deaf awareness skills and some of the difficulties that deaf children face. Less than a thimbleful of liquid lay inside, but the colors shifted and clouded in a pattern of millions.

The majority of successful speechreaders do use residual hearing to supplement their lipreading, and it's clear that Max does as well.Despite this, I enjoyed how Max's hearing aids were an important part of the story and the focus on him making friends and developing confidence in himself and his ability to communicate. Luckily, Max’s roommate Sasha is running a holiday camp, so Sasha and her team of 5-year-olds come along to help outmanoeuvre the headteacher. I would have been happy to read more about their personal stories before moving on to the miniature adventures. Given how well done the deafness is, the unrealistic savant MacGyvering HAs (reminiscent of Tony Stark’s “magic” HAs for Clint Barton) is disappointing. His only friend is the useless school caretaker, Mr Darrow, who shares his love of building intricate models.

For my final book I thought I would try a book that was more light hearted, and Ross Montgomery’s book delivered. Darrow somehow entirely replaced the aid's internal mechanisms with new equipment that aid manufacturers, audiologists, and innovators do not have access to.Darrow has done is re-mapped Max's aid so as to increase the amplification of sounds, suggesting that the audiologist whose responsibility it is to do this is entirely incompetent. The historical documents of the Floor are great satire, the story of the warring factions and their place within Max's world gives a new perspective on his own problems.

All and all, it is quite an adventure, and I would only recommend it to children who like adventure stories. For a book with central themes of friendship and loyalty, Max's decision at the end came across as pretty selfish and unnecessary to me, even if Sasha was shown to be cool with it. He tried not to think about what would happen if he used too much serum, or too little, or--and it didn’t even bear thinking about--he dropped the bottle.His love of small models leads to an unlikely friendship with the school caretaker, Mr Darrow, who nurtures Max's talent in model-making. The support characters tend to fall into two dimensional buttresses that serve only to advance plot or provide Max with someone to interact with. What kid hasn’t pretended there are microscopic people living microscopic lives right under our noses? Luke, the son, soon realizes, however, that slacking was going to get both him and all his people killed. Darrow fixes one of Max’s aids so that he hears better in that ear (including things he’s never heard before) and can pick up radio.