Max the Brave

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The story that Max the Brave tells is so simple. Yet, it is so interactive and enabled me to have a lovely discussion with my sister about bravery and animals. I love it so much that I’m considering borrowing a copy from my local library to bring it into my classroom for my students to enjoy. I heard a lot about this book and loved the idea of the drawings! I wasn't disappointed though I found it quite odd that he doesn't know what a mouse is as it should be instinctual to know... or you should at least ASK questions about what a mouse looks like! (Which he never did!) Ed Vere tells us more about Max, and why it's so important for adults to love picture books How do you feel about Max the Brave being chosen for Bookstart Treasure? This is Max. Max the Brave who wants to prove himself by catching a mouse... only he doesn't know what a mouse looks like, so off he goes to find out. As he goes he asks if the animal is a mouse and each time is told no, until... My ideas always come from drawing. I’d been drawing this small kitten for a while. He seemed feisty from the start but also young and naive. So he doesn’t yet know what a mouse looks like but he's eager to chase one; he'll learn, but it means that he can be tripped up throughout the book.

After a 2-hour procedure, Max had been saved, the fluid had been drained and he was now on a ventilator to give him a rest.” Max demonstrated that curiosity is normal to have and that we don't always have every single answer. This led to a genuinely amusing book that is sure to grab the attention of young readers and entertain the entire family all at once! Children are sure to follow along, fully engrossed as they wait to see if Max finally finds that darn mouse. I’d actually done the race the year before I was pregnant with Max, when I was first starting to get into running. Never did I ever think I would ever benefit from the charity." Max was born six days late on the 29th August 2018. The birth was straightforward with Suzie having a 4-hour labour with a natural birth. “We were over the moon, he was absolutely perfect in every single way.”

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It’s an incredible honour for 'Max' to be chosen from so many amazing books. I can’t tell you how delighted I am that so many children are going to get the opportunity to read Max - and that it's a present from BookTrust to them! It's such a wonderful initiative - I’m honoured to be working with BookTrust and so proud to be involved, alongside Max, with Bookstart Treasure. Why do you think it’s important for young children to get access to brilliant books? Max is such a cute little kitten that people call him sweet and dress him up in ribbons. But he hates ribbons, and he doesn’t want to be sweet! He sees himself as a brave and courageous mouse catcher. There’s only one problem: he doesn’t know what a mouse looks like. He searches high and low and asks the birds, the fly, and the elephant if they are mice. Finally, he finds someone who maybe be able to help--or maybe his ally has ulterior motives. When Max finally confronts the monster, he realizes that being Max the Brave may not be as great as he thought. It’s important because we want children to love reading - and to continue reading as they grow. We need to put high-quality, entertaining and fun books in front of not only children but adults, too. I always write for children and the grown-ups who'll be reading to them, because if a grown-up is bored reading to a child, that transmits to the child. If parents enjoy reading great, entertaining books then that increases the chances that children will grow up loving reading.Reading because it’s fun and because children love the world that books can take them into. Max breastfed incredibly well from the minute he was born, we were so happy to watch our baby boy grow into such a handsome little character, always full of smiles and laughter.”

But the funniest thing is that I had received an ARC for this book last year but never got around to reading it and it expired.Please note that we received a free copy of this book as a result of a blog tour. However, this in no way influenced our rating or review. We got to September and I just thought what else are we going to do? I remembered that we were going to do the race and I thought we could still do it. We made little Max the Brave t-shirts and had a really nice time; it was wonderful to bring all the family over for something positive, as the last time we had all been together was at Max’s funeral. To all meet up for something happy, we were all buzzing afterwards.” I felt at home at GOSH. We made friends with the nurses. Sometimes they would come in and give me a hug and make me a toast, I just felt close to them. Sometimes we just spoke about what we were watching on Netflix, it didn’t always have to be clinical. They become your friends because you don’t see your friends anymore, you just see the hospital. The cleaners of the ward just loved Max as well, Max loved it when they came in and danced to the radio with him. I think Max touched the hearts of many people on the wards." To be honest, when we first arrived at GOSH, I was actually quite relieved. Because of the journey we’d had at our local hospital and because Max’s illness was so rare, they’d had no idea how to treat it and they didn’t specialise in anything like that. Arriving at GOSH, we knew we were in one of the best children’s hospitals in the UK, in the world even, so we had a little bit of peace of mind. If we were going to be treated anywhere, this is where we wanted to be.”

Max also happens to be a mouse-catcher. There's a small problem, however. Max does not know what a mouse looks like! : Max is always asking: are you a mouse? Which really gets the interactive part going. My sister is consistently responding to the book, yelling out answers — which is when I know a book is great for kids and for use in class. It also gets a discussion going: is Max brave? I'm so glad I finally got a chance to read it and I found it quite amoosing. And I'm sure this sentiment will be shared by anybody who reads it! I’m always on the lookout for children’s books for my younger sister and trying to get her to be more interested in books. Max the Brave was perfect. Max went straight into intensive care when he arrived at GOSH and underwent various tests to get a diagnosis. “After two long weeks of waiting, we were called into the parents meeting room, the world was upon our shoulders. Max had been diagnosed with a Malignant Rhabdoid Tumour, a highly malignant childhood cancer. The prognosis was not good.”This is a total nonsense book but one where you can interpret parts of the story into a discussion with a child... not a bad thing but there are better ways to supply a message subtly. (One such discussion could be about asking questions when you don't have enough information and another may be about who we can trust to gain information from.) The staff allowed us to have the chance to see Max again and to have some sort of quality of life. Even though he was so young, he was still happy to be in the room on the ward, he enjoyed his time there. They also allowed us to be able to say goodbye to him, I’m not sure that would have been the case if we hadn’t been treated at GOSH." In some ways, Max the Brave was very interactive. Max is a cat who is trying to be more brave and catch a mouse — the thing is, he doesn’t know what a mouse looks like. So off we go following Max and his journey to look for a mouse. He travels, meeting an array of different animals, big and small, in his hunt to catch a mouse.

|But Max will not let sth this trivial deter him. He goes around asking everybody he runs into if they're a mouse! The fundraising helps me feel like I’m still being a mum to Max, because I’m not going to get to take him to football practice, or buy school uniform, so my way of doing that for him is to help other children. It’s all in his name and in his memory, so it makes me feel like I’m being his mum, I know I always will be.”

If we’re going to encourage children to read from an early age, then we have to do it with good books and I’m thrilled that Max is considered a good book. Where did the idea for Max the Brave come from? Although this image is quite tiny, I found this particular illustration where he climbs a tree full of birds to inquire abt mice esp cute! (Yes, birds make me swoon!) Determined to be heroic, rather than sweet, Max the kitten goes in search of a mouse to hunt, since hunting mice is what brave cats do. Not sure just what a mouse looks like, Max interrogates a number of creatures, asking each one whether they are a mouse. When he finally does meet a mouse, that enterprising little creature assures him that he is a monster, and that the mouse Max is looking for is actually the sleeping monster nearby... Max was so poorly, he struggled to make it out of ITU, which meant we had to leave him every night to stay in the hospital accommodation. We are so grateful that’s around because we don’t live locally, so it would have taken us about an hour and a half to travel into the hospital each day. So be able to just walk around the corner was just amazing. It’s never nice having to leave your child, but we knew that when he was in ITU, he was under 24-hour one-on-one supervision, so it gave us peace of mind to know we were so close by."