There are stories about runaway children like "Huckleberry Finn" and "Peter Rabbit" that have become classics. These stories sometimes carry a bigger-than-life lesson with protagonists that have become legendary.
Contemporary stories about runaways usually don't give the glories of the child on the street. However, "Maniac Magee" is a unique novel, combining a boy who becomes a legend with three real and humorous experiences as he runs away and tries to "act as a father to boys when he himself ached to be somebody's son."At the age of 3, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's parents were killed on a high-speed trolley as it crossed the Schuylkill River. Living eight years with Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan, who never talked to each other, finished Jeffrey's life with a family. It also finished his schooling.
This is where the legend and the name Maniac Magee begin. It is remembered that he was a scraggly little kid with "soles of both sneakers hanging by their hinges and flopping open like dog tongues each time they came up from the pavement."
He is known to have begged a book from a stranger, caught a soccer ball and returned a punt like an athlete on a high school team, joined the 10 Pickwell kids at the dinner table and hit the fastball on a Little League team further than anyone could recall.
But that is all legend. What the story really tells is that Maniac Magee lived with the Beales, a loving black family; a short stay with Grayson, the old man with a head full of baseball stories, and while at the McNab's, he redirected the two small boys from their environment of prejudice and hate.
Maniac Magee blurred the boundaries of the East and the West, the families of of blacks and whites, by living on each side, making friends and leaving his mark.
The love of books is a strong thread throughout the novel, such as when Amanda Beale shares books with Maniac Magee and when he coerces the McNab children to do their homework. Teaching Grayson to read is one of the most delightful descriptions in the book:
"The old man showed an early knack for consonants. Sometimes he got the M and the N mixed up, but the only one that gave him trouble day in and day out was C . . . Vowels were something else. He didn't like them, and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through 20 words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you knew pretty much where they stood, but you could never trust a vowel . . . "
"Maniac Magee" is a creative piece of work, certainly Spinelli's best book to date. It is alive and energetic. Some readers may not understand the boy's obsession with a place so close to the Schuylkill River, but they will relate to his superhero athletic feats and delight in the victories - although small - that he attains.