Max is a good kid floating in the netherworld of being not quite a teenager. A summertime interlude at a family camp allows him to re-invent himself for a week as Mad Max, a much wilder kid; he’s experimenting, trying on a new persona. By the end of the week he’s grown, all right, but not in a direction he’s entirely comfortable with, and he has to decide which parts of Mad Max to keep – which are really him – and which to discard. The book is narrated by Max, who, in his storytelling, tends to go off on tangents, many of which are rendered in 138 fun, funny, and oddball footnotes.