Maximum Boy

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for books. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "Maximum Boy" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Maximum Boy" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Maximum Boy is a series of eight chapter books for young readers written by the humorist Dan Greenburg, illustrated by Greg Swearingen, and published by Scholastic from 2001 to 2003.^[1] Alternatively, Maximum Boy is the main character of the series, a boy superhero, and the full title of each volume begins "Maximum Boy, starring in".^[2] The first volume was The Hijacking of Manhattan (that is, full title Maximum Boy, starring in the Hijacking of Manhattan). It was also issued as simply Hijacked! and as How I Became a Superhero.^[3][4]

"Maximum Boy" is Max Silver, an 11-year-old boy who lives on the north side of Chicago beside Lake Michigan, with his mom, dad, and teenage sister Tiffany. He has braces, eyeglasses, and superpowers: he can lift freight trains, fly faster than a space shuttle, and burp the alphabet. He has an adult friend named Porter Torrington, who is "Tortoise Man" and has a superpower called the Tortoise Ray.

Max has a few weaknesses. Milk products and sweet potatoes give him a badly upset stomach. Ragweed makes him sneeze his head off. Seeing and hearing mathematics makes him weak and dizzy.

Dan Greenburg grew up in Chicago like Max and partly based the fictional character on his own childhood. For example, Greenburg hated math lessons and Max loses his super powers if he comes across a math problem.^[5]

The Maximum Boy books are the earliest works by illustrator Greg Swearingen with records linked to his name in the Library of Congress online catalog.