Tommy DiScipio

Period 8 ILA

Letter essay 3

Dear Blog audience,

I recently finished reading the book Maniac Magee a realistic fiction book written by Jerry Spinelli. This book was published in 1990 and is a Newbery award winning book. Jerry Spinelli was born in Pennsylvania. His love for sports inspired him to write a poem about a football game he had won. He wrote many short stories most for adults but they were all rejected by publishers. The fifth book he wrote was written for adults once again and rejected but a children’s publisher picked it up. This is how he accidentally became a children’s author.

Maniac Magee is a story about an orfin who is looking for a home in pennsylvania. The book is about a kid who’s parents died when he was 3 and he has been living with his odd Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan who refuse to talk to each other. And in the middle of a school play he yells at the Aunt and Uncle and runs away and that is how he disappeared. Ever  since he ran away people talk about how it is really rare to see him around town. And he basically lives in a place divided into race separated into an East side and a West side. And Jeffrey (Maniac Magee) finds a way to bring some of the  blacks and whites together. Jeffery is a big fan of baseball and he showed up to a game once and hit a kids fastball something no one has ever done before because the kid threw so hard. Eventually the news spreads across town and everyone keeps talking about how he hit the fastball.

One of the quotes in Maniac Magee that really stands out to me would be “ I’m from Bridgeport.” “ Bridgeport? Over there? That Bridgeport?”. This quote stood out to me because when Jeffery told Amanda that he was from the part of Bridgeport where all the blacks were it really shocked her and it let the reader know that Bridgeport was separated into whites on one end and blacks on the other (pg-12). Another quote that I would like to point out is “Don’t stop till yer outta town runt! Don’t let me ever catch ya!” (pg -27) This is an interesting quote because Mcnab is letting Jeffery know that if he ever gets caught then bad things will happen to him.

If I had to rate this book 1 out of 10 I would give it an 8 because it has a very interesting main idea and I like how the author talked about Jeffery and his back story like who his parents were and how he lived most of his life.        

From,

Tommy