Librarian's Pick of the Week: Maniac Magee

Title: Maniac Magee
Author: Jerry Spinelli
Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy
Published: 1990
Age: 9+

Synopsis: Maniac Magee comes home! Little, Brown and Company takes great pleasure and pride in announcing that, effective immediately, we will be the sole publisher of the paperback edition of Jerry Spinelli's classic Newbery Medal winner, Maniac Magee. It has been eight years since Maniac Magee won both the prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the Newbery Medal, and its popularity among young readers remains undiminished. The story of a boy who finds himself when he runs away from an intolerable situation continues to reverberate with humor and truth.

Review: Warning: this interesting book is a mythical story about racism. It should not be read as reality. Legend springs up about Jeffrey ``Maniac'' Magee, a white boy who runs faster and hits balls farther than anyone, who lives on his own with amazing grace, and is innocent as to racial affairs. After running away from a loveless home, he encounters several families, in and around Two Mills, a town sharply divided into the black East End and the white West End. Black, feisty Amanda Beale and her family lovingly open their home to Maniac, and tough, smart-talking ``Mars Bar'' Thompson and other characters are all, to varying degrees, full of prejudices and unaware of their own racism. Racial epithets are sprinkled throught the book; Mars Bar calls Maniac ``fishbelly,'' and blacks are described by a white character as being ``today's Indians.'' In the final, disjointed section of the book, Maniac confronts the hatred that perpetuates ignorance by bringing Mars Bar to meet the Pickwells--``the best the West End had to offer.'' In the feel-good ending, Mars and Maniac resolve their differences; Maniac gets a home and there is hope for at least improved racial relations. Unreal? Yes. It's a cop-out for Spinelli to have framed this story as a legend--it frees him from having to make it real, or even possible. Nevertheless, the book will stimulate thinking about racism, and it might help educate those readers who, like so many students, have no first-hand knowledge of people of other races. Pathos and compassion inform a short, relatively easy-to-read story with broad appeal, which suggests that to solve problems of racism, people must first know each other as individuals. - Joel Shoemaker, Tilford Middle School, Vinton, IA


If you're intrigued, don't forget to check our library's catalog for this book!