Maniac Magee | Jerry Spinelli | Maniacs are good friends

Maniac Magee | Jerry Spinelli | *Teacher Review of Maniac Magee*

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Maniac Magee

	Maniac Magee Jerry Spinelli Little, Brown Young Readers, 1999 - 180 pages average customer review:based on 710 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary as he accomplishes athletic feats and other extraordinary exploits that awe his contemporaries. Paperback.

Maniacs are good friends

After reading Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, I have learned a lot about what it takes to be a good friend. I thought I had good friends before I read it. Friends are supposed to be people you can laugh with, remember forever, and trust enough to ask for a payday loan without any threat of interest. Spinelli produced in Jeffrey Magee a completely different kind of friend.
Maniac, as he came to be known by other characters in the book was homeless, needy, untrusting of most others, independent, and reclusive. He preferred running through town and sleeping with animals at the zoo to staying with his stiff, staunch, and insensitive foster parents. When he does run away, he finds himself in the same town his parents died. He discovers there the racial hate, socio-economic oppression, and disbelief in people he thought he had run away from. But he also discovered that the people there revered him as a legend.
Spinelli wastes no time complicating Magee's life. Soon after he runs away, Maniac is sought after by a neighborhood bully, ousted by racist adults, hunted by arrogant unsupervised white kids, and indebted to the first kind person he meets. Spinelli creates a lovelable boy, with many of the same characteristics as Tom Sawyer, and a lot of the same plights many of his readers recognize from experience. Only one thing makes Magee stand out from all the rest.
Magee is blessed with a shroud of heroism. In his own meandering and misanthropic way, Maniac saves a retired minor league pitcher from his lonliness, restores the legend of a fallen big brother, returns courage to a fearful bully and reaffirms a girls faith in humanity. He also teaches a town to accept differences on both sides of the track...in spite of color differences.
The novel is colored with humor, charm and sincerity. Spinelli seems to be unfolding real events on a neon canvas. So bright and amusing they can't possibly be real, these moments resonate with whispers of reality. Parts of Spinelli's childhood seep from the pages, touching the lives of all readers and embracing the childhood some have yet to leave behind.
Readability is enhanced by short fast paced chapters, a subtle thread of suspense and a genuine curiosity about what Maniac Magee will do next. No matter who reads this book, Magee is sure to run them down leaving their minds stamped with Jerry Spinelli's gifted writing.

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*Teacher Review of Maniac Magee*

Title: Maniac Magee
Author: Maniac Magee
Publisher: Little, Brown & Co. Young Readers
Publication Date: 9/1/199
Reading Level: Accelerated Reader Level: 4.9 Appropriate for children ages 9-13.
Number of pages: 184
Genre: Fiction (Young Adult)
Jerry Spinelli's classic book Maniac Magee is still read and enjoyed by thousands of young adults every year. A Newberry Award winner, Spinelli's story of a young orphan named Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee provides its readers with both an exciting and moving plot. Maniac becomes a legend in the town of Two Mills for numerous feats, among them running along train rails, untying an enormous knot and beating the fastest kid in town running backwards. At the same time, the book addresses the important issues of racism, segregation and ignorance. This review will provide potential readers with a brief synopsis of the plot, some negative aspects of the book and the reviewer's opinion of the book as an elementary school teacher.
The plot of Maniac Magee revolves around the story's main character, Jeffrey Lionel Magee. Known simply as "Maniac," Magee appears suddenly in Two Mills, a segregated town divided racially into East and West Ends. Maniac's parents were killed in a trolley accident, and he arrives in Two Mills after running away from his aunt and uncle. Magee first meets Amanda Beale, a young black girl who loves her books so much that she carries them around in a suitcase at all times. Well-developed characters like Amanda are found throughout Spinelli's story, providing readers with a variety of personalities to interact with Maniac. The more time Maniac spends in Two Mills, the more his legend grows. He takes on John McNabb, the town bully, in a baseball game and hits home-run after home-run off of him. He races Mars Bar Thompson, the self-anointed fastest kid in Two Mills, and backpedals the last part of their race to victory. He unties Cobble's Knot, a prolific knot outside of a pizza parlor, earning himself free pizza for a year. As the story progresses, Maniac lives in a variety of locations: first with the African-American Beale family, for a time with racist and white McNabb family and even in the Two Mills Zoo in the buffalo enclosure. Throughout the story the reader is introduced to real-world issue of segregation between the town's East and West Ends. Maniac experiences the ignorance and racism that exist between the town's African-American and white communities that have simmered below the surface for years. Maniac is thrust into the middle of this issue because of his comfort with both groups of people, and the author Spinelli does an excellent job of illustrating to his young audience the danger and outright silliness of such close-minded ideas.
If there is a negative aspect to Spinelli's story, it might be the book's ending. As a caution to potential readers, after following such an engaging plot the book's conclusion is a bit of a letdown. As to avoid being a spoiler, this review will not detail the ending, but will ensure potential readers that the conclusion is short and the book remains thrilling up to this point.
As a fourth grade teacher, I have read this book aloud to my class and they would beg me to continue every time we had to stop. My students and I thoroughly enjoy the great characters and the thrilling adventures that Maniac has throughout the story. Not only is Maniac Magee incredibly fun to read, it also provides its readers with important real-world issues such as racism and close-mindedness. I would highly recommend this book to any student in fourth through eighth grade, but even as an adult I enjoy reading Maniac Magee every time!

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Run to this Book!

Run to this Book!

The Best of Juvenile Fiction

The story of Maniac Magee is a folk tale for today's kids. Jeffrey
Lionel Magee--known as Maniac Magee--runs away from home. His parents
died while he was only a baby and he had been living with his aunt and
uncle. One day when he couldn't deal with his caretakers any more, he
ran away from home and just kept running. That is where the legend of
Maniac Magee begins.

Maniac is a true folk hero, right up there with John Henry, Davy
Crocket, and Johnny Appleseed. Jerry Spinelli writes at the beginning
of the book, "The history of a kid is one part fact, two parts legend,
and three parts snowball." All through the book, the reader has to
figure out which parts of Maniac's story are fact and which parts are
legend.

The first day Maniac arrives in town, he runs into Amanda on the
street. Amanda pulls a book from the suitcase full of books that she
carries with her at all times and gives it to Maniac. This is the
beginning of Maniac's friendship with Amanda. On that first day in
town, Maniac also beats the high school football team in football and
saves a boy from a group of bullies. Already, Maniac has made quite a
reputation for himself.

Throughout this exciting book, Maniac has to deal with issues that
affect real kids today. The town where Maniac stays is segregated.
Most of the white families live on one side of the train tracks and
most of the black families live on the other side. Maniac makes many
people unhappy when he makes friends that are both black and white.

Also in the story, one of the characters in the story never learned
how to read. As readers, we learn a lot about education and illiteracy
in the United States. There are many connections young readers can
make to their own lives at school.

While the beginning of the book might seem a little confusing, stick
with it! This book really becomes excellent after the first couple
chapters. It takes that long for the reader to get used to Jerry
Spinelli's style of writing. Spinelli writes clearly and mixes in
beautiful and poetic sentences to keep the writing interesting: "The
old man gave himself up willingly to his exhaustion and drifted off
like a lazy, sky-high fly ball."

Once you read this book, you will definitely want to read other books
by Jerry Spinelly.

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Finding a place in the world

Maniac Magee is a young boy who lost his parents and was forced to move in with his aunt and uncle. Not liking them he one day decide to run away. Now on his own Magee was trying to find a place to stay. Later on he meets a girl who lives on the black east side and befriends her because they share the same interest in books. She later invites him home and he stays with her for a while. But since he was white, people had started to have issues with him so he decided to leave. Then after being on his own again he met a man by the name of Greyson, and he stayed with Greyson for a while at a gym in a janitor's closet. One day Greyson passed away, and not knowing where to go or whether to stay Magee left and went out for his daily run. He decided to go on the east side again and he once again ran into his old friend. They talked and he decided he was going to go back to where he used to stay. Finally Mars who was a bully towards Magee ran into him one day and made fun of him and somehow they talked for a while and began to not hate each other. He also become friends with some of the other people in town and decided that that was his place and he finally had a place where he belonged.

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Maniac about Maniac Magee

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers 1991
Reading Level: 5.4
194 Pages
Genre: Fiction

Maniac Magee is the story of a young boy whose parents die in a tragic accident. He is left in the care of his argumentative and unpleasant aunt and uncle. He runs away and the book tells about his travels as a homeless boy in search of a home.

Maniac seems to become attached to a town divided in two: the blacks and the whites. Maniac, however, is a young man before his time and cannot understand why the two sides are so opposed to each other. As he journeys back and forth across a line that all others are unwilling to cross, he realizes that they are much more alike than any of them can imagine.

On both sides he finds families that take him in, and show him how compassionate people can be, regardless of their skin color. He also finds people on each side who represent the ugliness that people can often show. There are also individuals who represent all different facets of people in the world. But through it all, Maniac's adventures teach a few lessons incredibly pertinent to today's society.

While the voice of the book is confusing at times, the book is exciting to read and as mentioned before, addresses several issues that are at the front of society today. As an inner city school teacher the issues are particularly real. I read this book as a student and loved it then, and now as a teacher, can even more understand how important it is for students to read this book. I would recommend it for either individual students looking for a good book to read. However, I feel this book is particularly suited for whole class readings, as I feel it lends itself to many class discussions about topics that students will find relevant and most likely have opinions to share.

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