Funny / Maniac Magee

• Amanda changing Mars Bar's nickname to "Snickers" so no one will take him seriously.
• The organization of the East End race between Maniac and Mars, which is pretty much constant bickering by a streetful of kids. No one knows what to use for the finish, the starting line keeps getting drawn crooked and they have to find a yardstick, and a fistfight almost breaks out over what the starter is supposed to yell and whether cheering is allowed. All this goes on while traffic gets detoured and Maniac and Mars just stand at the start line waiting for several minutes.
• Maniac says grace:
  "Dear God, we want to take this opportunity to thank you for the best Thanksgiving dinner we ever had... Well, I ever had. I guess I shouldn't speak for my friend Grayson - " He peeked across the table. "Grayson," he whispered, "is this your best one, too?"
  The old man opened one eye; he shrugged. "Don't know. Ain't tasted it yet."
  Maniac glared, rolled his eyes upward, hissed: "Gray-son."
  The old man flinched. "Uh, yeah" - he squinted one-eyed at the chicken - "yeah, I guess it is."
  "The best," Maniac prompted.
  "The best."
  Maniac went on.
• Hester and Lester swearing never to take a bath without Amanda again, by placing their hands on Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.
• Maniac yelling trash talk at the meatloaf Mrs. Beale is pressing into a pan.
  • Later, Maniac yelling trash talk at the football championship game with Grayson and then looking around quickly to make sure Mrs. Beale wasn't around to hear him.
• The entire scene where Maniac finds Russell and Piper in Valley Forge is refreshingly lighthearted after several of the saddest consecutive chapters imaginable. Particularly when they think he might be a cop:
  They stared at him some more. They moved in cautiously, one on either side. They opened his blanket. They patted him all over. "What're we doin' this for?" Piper wanted to know.
  "We're feelin' for a gun," Russell explained.
  "Oh."
• Russell and Piper strike up a deal with Maniac, saying that in return for them going to school for a week, he must stand in Finsterwald's back yard for ten minutes. When Maniac calmly agrees to this, Piper runs shrieking from the house.
• Mars Bar telling Maniac the aftermath of rescuing Russell from the trolley line. Apparently, Russell latched onto him and wouldn't let go even after he'd been brought to safety, so Mars Bar ended up bringing both Russell and Piper back to his house to get help from his mom.
• The Black Comedy depiction of Maniac losing his parents.
  One day his parents left him with a sitter and took the P&W high-speed trolley into the city. On the way back home, they were on board when the P&W had its famous crash, when the motorman was drunk and took the high trestle over the Schuykill River at sixty miles an hour, and the whole kaboodle took a swan dive into the water.