Maniac Magee | Jerry Spinelli | When I was a child...

Maniac Magee | Jerry Spinelli | Some Great Lessons for Kids....

books:

Maniac Magee

	Maniac Magee Jerry Spinelli Little, Brown Young Readers, 1999 - 180 pages average customer review:based on 712 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

When I was a child...

I read this book at 10, and it's been with me ever since. The themes on racism and courage still resonate when I stumble upon similar experiences. It is deeply moving--so what if some questions are never answered! (A fact I honestly don't recall...) It's in my children's library.

Some Great Lessons for Kids....

My 4/5grade class has been reading this book - they have struggled with some of the vocabulary and "jargon", but the message has definitely come through! I can't remember the last time I cried while reading a book, but the chapter after "Grayson" had me grabbing for tissues....As a teacher, I can't recommend it enough - especially when trying to teach students about figurative language and author techniques, of which Spinelli is a genuis!

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A lesson in tolerance

During my years as an elementary and high school librarian, I read all of the Newbery Award winners from 1922 on. Jerry Spinelli's "Maniac," the 1991 winner, is one of my favorites both for its humor and its very effective message about learning and living tolerance for those who are different from us. Vona Van Cleef, bookwoman

A Child Fights Racism

Jeffrey Magee's parents wre killed in a train accident when he was just a child, so he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, who hated each other. He couldn't stand the tension between them, so he ran away. And boy could Jeffrey run. After a year of running, he ends up in a town he really likes. His first day there, he meets a black girl who reluctantly lends him a book from her vast collection. He amazes people all day in both the white and black sections of town, and he decides to stay. He spends his nights in one of the animal pens of the zoo, where he can eat some of their food and have their companionship. Soon he is famous in town and is given the name Maniac.

Maniac spends his time in town befriending a wide variety of people, and trying to confront and stop the racism he observes all around him.

This book is a nice story of innocence . Jeffrey is always trying to do the right thing, and the people in town take him in very openly. However, it seems that someone in this story should have tried to find Jeffrey's guardians and should have made him go to school instead of just letting him wander. I didn't like that the book didn't really have any conclusion; it was just a series of events.

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