Even the rest of the characters have that half-unbelievable, half-real quality about them, though not as powerfully. For instance, few people have ever known an Amanda Beale who carries her entire library to school everyday; but it is easy to believe that _someone_ like Amanda does exist . . . somewhere out there. And most kids could interview all the old parkhands in their states and probably not find one who has struck out Willie Mays, or any other major league baseball player, for that matter. Yet it is still easy to believe that the novel's Grayson has a real-life counterpart. Beginning with Chapter One, when the first strange characters, Uncle Dan and Aunt Dot, are introduced, readers may suspend their disbelief and experience one of the most wonderful adventures in modern children's literature.

I call it an adventure because, whether he or the readers know it or not, Jeffrey/Maniac is on a quest. He is looking for a place to call home, a place where he can be accepted and happy. Readers follow him from his first home in Bridgeport to his final home in a place-you-will-have-to-read-the-novel-to-know-about. This quest is not the only mythical element in this great novel: the hero also has several tasks to perform and dangers to brave before he achieves his dream. Along with all his "superpowers," he even has a "fatal flaw" to overcome: his naive nearsightedness when it comes to others.

Some of the tasks are as simple as undoing an impossible knot. Others are as "dangerous" as trying to make peace between blacks and whites in a neighborhood. Something else mythical is Maniac's experience in the West End, which can be called a "Descent into the Underworld". Like a modern Odysseus, he makes many educational stops on the way to his own special Ithaca. (The three parts of the book mark these stops.)

All of this is told in Jerry Spinelli's beautiful prose, which sometimes nearly becomes poetry. For example: "For most of November, winter toyed with Two Mills, whispered in its ear, tickled it under the chin. On Thanksgiving Thursday, winter kicked it in the stomach." At other times, the narrative seems to come straight out of a character's mind, with Spinelli taking on the voice of that character.

To top it all off, "Maniac Magee" has an excellent moral. (There are many little lessons scattered throughout the plot, but I will focus on the main one.) Interestingly, the novel does not make any fixed judgements on running away. First it seems to say that running away is not the answer and that homes must be worked on, as much as found. Then it reminds us that Jeffrey/Maniac would not have found his home had he not run away to look for it in the first place.

This story tugs at the heart and enriches the soul, but it also opens the mind.


Maniac Magee worth a prize? You must be joking!   December 20, 2007
 20 out of 33 found this review helpful

In suffering through another reading of the abysmal "Maniac Magee" given to my child by his school, I was motivated to warn other parents. The constant repetition in a children's book of words like "turds," "fart" and "pisshole" is not only tedious, it is far from educational. These are but three drops in the effluence of vulgarities that is the book that many children are required to read.

Some schools were won over after the publisher pushed for the book to win an ALA prize. Many school districts order books because they are staffed by indifferent people who are momentarily roused from a habitual lethargy by the spark of novelty, or worse, by the inducement of publisher-paid junkets. The self-styled "educational" publishing houses are run not by scholars but by those with a sharp mercantile sense who know that crass is catchy: it stops the purchasing manager's eye as he runs down a list of offerings. Some misguided people at the ALA awarded a prize imagining this book to be what it is not; they are the same sort who think themselves original and eloquent in describing each of hundreds of books like this as "fresh" and "relevant" and "written in a new voice."

The book is none of those things. It is obvious and contrived. The author's effort to express a mood, to communicate a certain tone and carry his narrative--that "new voice"--is inconsistent throughout the book, breaking down even within the space of a single paragraph or sentence. His attempts to mimic dialect are so inaccurate as to betray complete ignorance of the people he wants to show us he knows how to describe. You can see him huffing and puffing and failing. Often aware he is seen floundering, he tries to hide behind a screen of bombastically atrocious metaphors or gross imagery. "I really meant to look awkward and unpolished," you can hear him say, "Really I did." Artifices such as the disjointed vignettes of the initial chapters have all been seen before and he dabbles at them maladroitly. Even his pandering to what he imagines to be children's cruder reflexes is sophomorically executed. Children are better than his own faculties allow him to imagine.

The worst offense the book commits is to be the opposite of what the prize-givers thought they were celebrating. A central focus is the racial tension in Magee's town. I was offended by the crude caricatures of poor people on both sides of the divide. Too often they are held up for mockery with a scarcely disguised, smug sniggering at the less fortunate. A serious topic is trivialized as it is distastefully exploited as a commercial gimmick.

With books like this informing young minds, it is no wonder the world sees Americans as increasingly uncultivated boors. Maniac McGee should be cast in the rubbish with Scholastic Publishing's Captain Underpants and Professor Poopypants, other "prize winning" tripe foisted on hapless students.


Not everything is perfect   May 19, 2002
 18 out of 19 found this review helpful

I picked Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli for my school book report because the cover looked interesting. It showed a picture of feet running. Inside the book jacket was a poem that read:
"Ma-niac, Ma-niac
He's so cool
Ma-niac, Ma-niac
Don't go to school
Runs all night
Runs all right
Ma-niac, Ma-niac
Kissed a bull."

It looked very interesting and funny. I really liked the book because the main character, Maniac Magee, was funny and smart and cared about and helped people. You really want him to be happy.

Maniac Magee (whose really name was Jeffrey) became a homeless kid who lost his parents in a trolley accident. He wants a real home with a family and that is what he looks for in the story. He's really unusual. He is famous for running everywhere. He's so fast no one can beat him. He's really good at sports. He even hit a "frog" ball and turned it into an inside the park homerun. He can untie very complicated knots. Little kids bring him all their troubles and he helps solve them. He wins a lifetime supply of pizza but he's allergic to pizza! Everyone loves him--well, almost everyone. That's what bothers him and keeps him running all night.
Maniac doesn't see any bad in people. He keeps thinking they're nice. But some are so mean that he finally figures out they don't like him. He blames himself. Maniac meets a girl, Amanda. She has lots of books and he really wants one. She lets him have one to read. When he returns it she invites him to live with her family in the East End. Only black people live there. Maniac doesn't see any difference between the black and white people. When he sees there are some who don't understand each other he tries to get them to like each other. But this doesn't happen very easily.

After Maniac runs away from Amanda's house, he lives with the buffalos at the park zoo. One day he meets Grayson who used to be a Minor league pitcher. Grayson and Maniac become really close like grandson and grandfather. They do everything together. You'll have to read what happens next. It's very emotional.
Maniac spends time with the McNabb family in the West End. This is where the white people live. When he's there he tries to bring the East End and West End kids together. One time it doesn't work. Another time it does work.
Maniac runs away from all of his temporary homes because he wants things to be perfect. He learns that not everything can be perfect. Does he find what he wants in the end? You'll have to read the book to find out.


He's a maniac, maniac on the floor. And he's dancing...   April 22, 2004
 18 out of 24 found this review helpful

I sort of lump Jerry Spinelli and Kate DiCamillo into the same category. Though Spinelli has always been more prolific than DiCamillo (partly because he's been working longer), both authors create similar upbeat-but-acknowledge-the-world's-problems type children's books. And people love Spinelli and DiCamillo. Love them because they want to feel that these books really capture the unattainable good within the bad that is so very hard to write about. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of DiCamillo, and Spinelli's "Stargirl" left me kinda cold. So I picked up "Maniac Magee" with a kind of vain hope. Maybe this book would be better than I'd expected. Maybe it wouldn't drown the darker elements of life and society in the ooey-gooey syrup of a "Full House" episode. Maybe, in fact, this would be a great book. And you know what? It kind of is.

This is a tall tale. The awesome story of Maniac Magee. He was the fastest, smartest, coolest kid you'd ever meet. He could untie any knot you handed him, and outrun anyone you could name. He was tough and funny and never went to school. He was a living legend in his day and was colorblind as they come. When Maniac Magee moves into the black side of town, his appearance there and subsequent actions trip off a series of events that lead, if not to greater understanding between townspeople, then to a lessening of prejudices.

This is what I liked about "Maniac Magee". I liked that this book didn't end with Maniac ala Keesha Knight Pullman in "Polly" destroying the barriers between the white side and the black side of town single-handedly. I liked that he didn't destroy racism itself and that the ending of the book, rather than clearing up the town's problems, cleared up Maniac's problems. I liked that he had problems in the first place and that though he was an extraordinary human being, he made mistakes. I liked Mars Bar Thompson, a boy that is, in a way, a tall tale of his own and Maniac's worthy rival. I liked all these things, and more. I liked the story itself. It knew where to draw the line, how much to say, and how much to leave unsaid.

This is what I didn't like about "Maniac Magee". I didn't like that the book never really explained why the blacks hated the whites so much. Once in a while a black character would get angry at Maniac's appearance on the wrong side of town and yell at him things like, "Never enough, is it, Whitey? Just want more and more. Won't even leave us our little water in the street". The man who says these things to Maniac has obviously suffered heartily at the hands of whites in the past, but Spinelli paints the character as more of a crazy aberration representing a minority opinion. He doesn't explain WHY the African Americans wouldn't want a white person amongst them, and kids reading this might just think the guy was mean or unbalanced. To read this book is to already understand the underpinnings of racism. Otherwise, you might get a little bent out of shape reading a story in which a white kid beats a black one so badly that the white kid is able to run backwards over the finish line, effectively humiliating his black opponent.

There are things to love and dislike about "Maniac Magee". All in all, I found it fairly strong. The tall tale aspect of the storytelling, the rhythmic rise and fall of the action and words, and the book's telling conclusion all make it a rather good piece of writing. It's not as neatly tied up as much as it could be at the end, and that's just fine. Though I might not have handed it a Newbery award, it's well worth perusing and deserves to be on every child's reading list for a long long time.