Max Einstein – Rebels With a Cause

James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein's Rebels With a Cause is a Max Einstein adventure for 8 year olds about a girl genius who is VERY tired of being kept safe.

What happens

Max is twelve and already lecturing university students on physics (under a made-up name). A shady group called the Corp wants her brain for itself. So her billionaire friend Ben has tucked her away in a college dorm, with two bodyguards in the room across the hall.

She lasts until the weekend. Then she hides a little mirror in her shower bag, fakes a shower and slips off down the stairs.

What follows is a lot of fun. She sorts out a fire hydrant problem for some kids in Harlem. She beats an old friend at chess in five moves. She has a rude student wrestled to the floor in the middle of a lecture (not on purpose), and that ends up on the front page of the student paper. Which is exactly the kind of thing the Corp is watching for.

Max solves everything with science, and explains it as she goes. Chilling a can of Coke with a fire extinguisher. Making a stinky study room smell lovely with dryer sheets and a fan. A sound machine that knocks two thugs off their feet (one of them needs clean underpants afterwards). Your reader will probably want to try at least one of these at home! Maybe steer them towards the dryer sheets.

There's a softer side too. Max has never known her parents, and her whole history fits in one battered suitcase of Einstein bits. When she can't sleep she has pretend chats with Einstein in her head, and he gives rather good advice.

Then her friend Siobhan turns up from Ireland. People in her village are falling ill and she thinks the ground itself is sick. Ben says lie low. Siobhan says come to Ireland. Guess which one Max wants to listen to?

If you've got a reader who loves a clever girl who never does as she's told, this is super fun. It picks up after Max's first mission with her team, but it catches you up quickly.

What to read next

If they'd like to see where it all started, The Genius Experiment is in the library too. It opens with Max sleeping on a lumpy mattress above a New York horse stable and dreaming up a way to heat the place with manure.