Line #36 Literature/ManiacMagee


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/maniac_magee.png]]
2	->''Ma''-niac, ''Ma''-niac,
3	->He's so ''cool''
4	->''Ma''-niac, ''Ma''-niac,
5	->Don't go to ''school''
6	->Runs all ''night''
7	->Runs all ''right''
8	->''Ma''-niac, ''Ma''-niac,
9	->Kissed a ''bull!''
10	-->-- Two Mills jump-rope rhyme
11
12	''Maniac Magee'' is a 1990 children's book written by Creator/JerrySpinelli. It features a strange boy named Jeffrey Magee who loses his parents and runs away at age eleven, ending up a year later in Two Mills, a town in Pennsylvania that's divided into two sides: The East End, where all the black families live, and West End, with all the white families. Completely ignorant of how the town works, he meets a girl on the East End named Amanda Beale, from whom he borrows a book.
13
14	As the days go by, Jeffrey is sighted all over town doing incredible things - stealing football passes from high schoolers in the middle of practice, rescuing a boy from the backyard of the creepiest old man in town, and running - ''running'' - on the steel rail of the train tracks. When he tries to return Amanda's book, he both makes an enemy in "Mars Bar" Thompson, a kid who doesn't like seeing a white boy in his neighborhood, and finds a home with Amanda Beale's family. Months go by and Jeffrey makes a name for himself as the kid who can untie any knot, who runs like a demon, and who doesn't seem to understand that he looks different. He even earns a nickname: Maniac.
15
16	But while the Beales accept him into their family immediately, a few citizens of the East End aren't quite as welcoming. Trouble starts brewing for the Beale family, and before they know it, Maniac is off and running again.
17
18	The book follows Maniac's year-long search for a home in Two Mills and his attempts to deal with the ugly feelings on both sides of Hector Street, as told by a narrator possibly decades later detailing the facts behind a town legend.
19
20	A film adaptation aired on Nicklodeon in 2003, although it was [[LighterAndSofter lighter]] in comparison with the book.
21	----
22	!!These are the following tropes:
23	* AbnormalAllergy: Maniac is allergic to pizza. No, not to any of the ingredients in it. Really: he's allergic to ''pizza'' ([[MindScrew don't think too hard about it...]]). Ironically, he wins a certificate giving him one free pizza a week for a year.
24	* AbusiveParents: Played with for Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan. It's never mentioned if they were abusive to Maniac, but their hostile relationship didn't exactly provide a loving environment. After eight years, it's clear to see why Maniac wanted out.
25	* AdultsAreUseless: Maniac skips town in the middle of a school concert, and the choir director is the only adult there who makes any kind of effort to stop him. Maniac's aunt and uncle are too driven by their hatred of one another to notice.
26	* AllPartOfTheShow: In Maniac's concert, there is a song about talking to animals. Maniac screams at his aunt and uncle to talk to each other during the song and after it ends. The audience mistakes it for improvising until Maniac runs out of the auditorium.
27	* AllBikersAreHellsAngels: Briefly parodied. Among the spectators gathered to watch Maniac tackle Cobble's Knot is a tricycle gang of preschoolers who call themselves [[GoshDangItToHeck the Heck's Angels]].
28	* AlliterativeFamily: All ten of the Pickwell children have names that start with the letter D.
29	* AmbiguouslyAbsentParent: The three [=McNab=] brothers live with their father, and no mention is made of their mother.
30	* AndYourRewardIsEdible: Maniac's reward for solving Cobble's Knot is one extra-large pizza each week for a year. Ironically, he's allergic to pizza.
31	* ArtisticLicenseMedicine: Maniac is allergic to pizza. Not a specific topping, not dairy or tomatoes or gluten. Pizza in its entirety.
32	* ArtisticLicensePhysics : Grayson's "stopball," a supposed secret pitch of his that allows the ball to stop in midair. Probably a lie, but Maniac believes it and even manages to convince John [=McNab=]'s younger siblings that it's real.
33	* AngerBornOfWorry: Amanda loves Maniac like a brother, but he drives her absolutely crazy running off all the time.
34	* AwfulWeddedLife: Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan despise each other, but won't divorce due to their faith. This creates a miserable situation for them and an even worse one for little Jeffery, who's caught in the middle of their (extremely hostile) relationship.
35	%% zce * BadLiar: Amanda ''might'' have been able to drag Maniac to the store with her before he saw the graffiti... if it hadn't been so early in the morning that all the stores were closed.
36	%% zce * BadassBookworm: Maniac, again, as well as Amanda Beale.
37	%% zce * BelligerentSexualTension: Amanda and Mars Bar appear to have shades of this, especially apparent towards the end of the book.
38	%% zce * BerserkButton: Do ''not'' mess with Amanda's books.
39	%% zce ** Maniac gets a similar button with [[spoiler: Grayson's old baseball glove]].
40	%% zce * BigBrotherMentor: Hester and Lester see Maniac this way. He tries to be one to Piper and Russell, as well.
41	* BlackAndNerdy: Amanda loves reading and school.
42	* BlackComedy: The first chapter takes this route when Maniac's parents are killed with "the whole kaboodle took a swan dive into the water" as the narration.
43	* BlitheSpirit: Maniac to Two Mills, very slowly. The main part of the book takes place over more than a year, and by that time very little has changed overall - but by the year the narrator is speaking from, well in the future, the segregation is a thing of the past and little girls from both sides of Hector Street sing the jump-rope song together.
44	* [[BrattyHalfPint Bratty Half-Pints]]: Piper and Russell.
45	** Hester and Lester, to an extent.
46	* CerebusCallback: While staying with Grayson, Maniac paints the number 101 on the door, dubbing his new home "Band Shell Boulevard". [[spoiler:After Grayson passes away, Maniac angrily brushes the number back out before taking off again.]]
47	* CoolOldGuy: Grayson.
48	* CrazySurvivalist: The [=McNabs=] are building a bunker around their house to prepare for the invasion of Black East Enders.
49	* DarkAndTroubledPast: [[spoiler: Poor Maniac lost his parents at an early age to a horrible trolley crash. And [[NoAccountingInTaste Aunt and Uncle]] weren't much help when they took him in, despite hating each other too much to give their nephew the time of day.]]
50	* DeathByNewberyMedal: [[spoiler: Earl Grayson.]]
51	* DeathGlare: Mars Bar can cause a ''traffic jam'' just by doing this, according to legend. [[spoiler: He later proves that he absolutely can.]]
52	* DelegationRelay: When Maniac comes to live at the home of the [=McNab=] brothers, they all see a dog taking a leak on the floor. Oldest brother John tells one of his younger brothers to clean it up. That brother tells the third to clean it up. The third brother ignores them. Maniac finally finds some newspaper and cleans it up himself.
53	* EmbarrassingNickname: Amanda gives one to Mars Bar at the end of the novel. "How ''bad'' can you act if everyone's calling you ''Snickers?''"
54	* FirstNameBasis: Amanda, and by extension her whole family, will only address Maniac by his given name: Jeffrey.
55	* HeroicBSOD: Maniac suffers a huge one after [[spoiler:Grayson passes away]].
56	* IJustWantToBeNormal: Maniac really just wants a home and a family to go back to every night.
57	* {{Jerkass}}: John and George [=McNab=], Mars Bar for most of the book.
58	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Mars Bar becomes this after saving Russell from being run over.
59	* KickTheDog: Amanda kicks the family dog, Bow Wow, in a fit of rage after having an argument with Maniac that resulted in Maniac running away.
60	* LastNameBasis: Earl Grayson makes a point of telling Maniac to call him by his last name, "like ever'body." Also, John [=McNab=] for the first part of the book, until Maniac meets the rest of his family and starts calling him by his first name.
61	* LikeBrotherAndSister: Maniac and Amanda, plus the littler Beale kids. He actually refers to them as such when describing them to Grayson:
62	--> "Do you know the Beales? Of seven twenty-eight Sycamore Street?"
63	--> The old man shook his head.
64	--> "Well, they were my family. I had a mother and father and a little brother and sister and a sister my age and a dog. My own room, too."
65	* LonelyFuneral: [[spoiler:Maniac is the only mourner at Grayson's funeral, which is little more than just burying the man's dead body in a hole.]]
66	* LonersAreFreaks: Averted. Maniac just wants to be accepted by everyone.
67	* MagicalRealism: A classic kid-friendly example. The book features a few elements that are implied to be supernatural ([[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane maybe]]), but never really treated as such by the characters. Maniac can run for days at a time without getting tired, he can run ''backwards'' faster than some kids can run forwards, he tries to learn a baseball pitch that can make a ball stop in mid-air, and he's allergic to ''pizza'' (no, not to any of the ingredients in it--to ''pizza''). Possibly justified by the implication that [[ShroudedInMyth Maniac is just the hero of a modern-day folktale]].
68	* MeaningfulName: Piper [=McNab=], whose laughter is like the blast of a truck horn.
69	* MemeticMutation: In-universe, Maniac's exploits become the subject of a jump-rope chant.
70	--> ''Maniac, Maniac, he's so cool\
71	Maniac, Maniac, don't go to school\
72	Runs all night\
73	Runs all right\
74	Maniac, Maniac, kissed a bull''
75	** It is actually a mutation - he kissed a baby buffalo. The error is even lampshaded by a footnote:
76	-->Nobody knows why "buffalo" became "bull" in the jump-rope song. History often gets things wrong.
77	* MenCantKeepHouse: The [=McNab=] brothers and their father live in a house filled with trash and animal refuse. The place is infested with roaches, and there's even a ''dissected bird on the kitchen table.'' It's made very clear that none of them care enough to even try to keep the place clean.
78	* MinorLivingAlone: The protagonist is a young boy without a permanent home, whose only living relatives don't seem to care that he's gone.
79	* MirroringFactions: Both the East End and the West End have loving families (the white Pickwells and the black Beales) and horrible racists (the [=McNab=] family and Old Ragpicker).
80	* MundaneMadeAwesome: Maniac unites a racially divided community behind him by untying a knot.
81	* NaiveNewcomer: Maniac, at first.
82	* NeverLearnedToRead: Grayson, at least until Maniac teaches him.
83	* NoAccountingForTaste: Maniac's aunt and uncle have a deep mutual hatred for each other, yet stay together because divorce is against their religion. It's their horrible relationship (and specifically, their hatred) that finally makes Maniac just snap and run as far away as he can from them at the start of the book. [[{{Unperson}} They make no effort to find him.]]
84	* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: Two Mills is based on Norristown, Pennsylvania, Jerry Spinelli’s childhood town. As such, Two Mills has a lot of geographical similarities with it, including the Elmwood Park Zoo and Valley Forge.
85	* AnOddPlaceToSleep: As a homeless kid, Maniac has slept in all kinds of odd places, such as the buffalo pen at the zoo. He compares the feeling of sleeping in a normal bed to "slowly rising on a scoop of mashed potatoes."
86	* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname:
87	** Mars Bar.
88	** And Maniac, to some parts of the town. Even if other people know his real first name, only the Beales keep calling him Jeffrey.
89	** A number of minor characters are known by nicknames as well.
90	* ParentalAbandonment: Maniac's parents died in a train crash when he was only three years old.
91	* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: After someone destroys Amanda's encyclopedia volume to make Maniac's Cobble's Knot confetti, he decides he must leave to protect them. He starts back towards the white side of town and [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame is repulsed by John [=McNab=] and his white gang welcoming him.]] It's the same on the other side of the street with Mars Bar. So he heads out of town walking down the center of the street. '''''Walking'''''.
92	* PunctuatedForEmphasis: Amanda tends to talk this way when annoyed.
93	** [[PunctuatedPounding Punctuated Kicking]]: And she'll go right into this if you manage to ''really'' tick her off.
94	* PunnyName: Earl Grayson. It's probably unintentional, though.
95	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Amanda is a master. Maniac gets a few for running away, including one she delivers when he's ''not even present''. She yells it at the front door.
96	* TheRival: Mars Bar to Maniac. It's largely one-sided on Mars Bar's part, though.
97	* RuleOfSymbolism: [[spoiler: While staying at the [=McNab=] household, Maniac put up with their [[MenCantKeepHouse filthy habits]] because their living room was a (relatively) clean place in the house. But after [=McNab=] senior set up a trench made up of concrete blocks in the living room, Maniac [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leaves]] without a word. He leaves, not necessarily because it's a little dirtier than it was before, but because it's unclean on the ''principle'' of how the concrete trench represents the [=McNabs'=] blatant racism and his unbridled hatred.]]
98	* TheRunaway: Maniac ran away from his aunt and uncle at age eleven, and hasn't had a steady home since.
99	** Russell and Piper [=McNab=] run away from home on a regular basis.
100	* [[SassyBlackWoman Sassy Black Girl]]: Amanda.
101	* [[ScaryBlackMan Scary Black Boy]]: Mars Bar. [[spoiler: He eventually warms up a little bit.]]
102	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Maniac tries to get his aunt and uncle to talk to each other at his school's musical, only to realize that they despise each other too much to care. He abandons the school and runs away from them for good.
103	* StarbucksSkinScale: Maniac doesn't understand why the East Enders call themselves black. To him, their skin colors are closer to things like cinnamon or butter rum or gingersnap or light fudge or dark fudge. But never licorice, which he considers "real black".
104	* SuperSpeed: Maniac. He outruns every member of a championship football team, scores an inside the park home run by bunting a frog, and beats Mars Bar in a race despite starting late and running backwards.
105	* SweetTooth: Mars Bar, presumably.
106	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Maniac will do anything for a pack of Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets.
107	** Mars Bar is rarely seen without a candy bar. He earned his nickname for a reason.
108	* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: Russell and Piper [=McNab=] are filthy, destructive little hellions who are not above smoking, drinking, or stealing. They're estimated to be about eight years old.
109	* TruthInTelevision: A street that divides a community neatly in half? [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17361995 St. Louis has it]].
110	** Spinelli based Two Mills on his hometown of Norristown, PA where US-202 splits the town in half.
111	* {{Tsundere}}: Amanda behaves this way towards Maniac and Mars Bar.
112	* UnreliableNarrator: Certain parts are deliberately left unclear, since it's a retelling of a story the kids of a town embellished over the years. Certain things like Mars' glare stopping traffic and the various feats Maniac performs to keep Russell and Piper in school may not be true - but, since many are actually requests made by little kids ''after'' both boys are famous, they certainly could be.
113	* UrbanLegends: The intro of the book, and some critical interpretations, imply that the story of Maniac Magee was nothing more than a local legend.
114	** Cobble's Knot grew its own legends.
115	* [[FantasticRacism Urban Racism]]: The West Enders and the East Enders have this attitude towards each other. It comes to the forefront when Magee is cooling off from the summer heat with a bunch of East Enders, using a burst fire hydrant - an old black man comes up to him and throws racial epithets at him, saying he doesn't belong there, until someone drags the old man away. Maniac leaves that night, and then for good a few weeks later.
116	* WhamLine:
117	** [[spoiler: "Five days later the old man was dead."]]
118	** And, to a lesser extent, "So why don't you go ahead and teach me to read?"
119	** Maniac takes "You ''can't'' get a library card without an ''address!''" as this. Amanda is pretty ashamed of herself for saying it.
120	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Neither Aunt Dot nor Uncle Dan are referenced again after Maniac runs away from them.
121	* WhatTheHellHero: Maniac not only beats Mars Bar in a race, but goes about doing it backwards! Afterwards he's not too pleased with himself for humiliating his opponent for no reason.
122	* WorthyOpponent: Maniac and Cobble's Knot. Maniac studies it for a long time at first, like a Rubik's Cube speed runner.
123	* YouKnowImBlackRight: Maniac is a subversion. Having not grown up in the highly segregated Two Mills, he doesn't realize how things work, which confuses the hell out of people who've dealt with it their entire lives.
124	* YoungerThanTheyLook: John [=McNab=] is 12 years old, 5'8", and 170 pounds.

Context Literature / ManiacMagee