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Maniac, Maniac, He's so cool! Maniac, Maniac, Maniac kissed a bull!
—Jump-rope rhyme
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Maniac Magee is a young adult book written by Jerry Spinelli. This book deals with a strange boy named Maniac Magee who starts off with a very crappy childhood. He runs away and tries to find a home, while making a legend of himself in the process. He then meets Amanda Beale, a young, sassy girl. She lends him a book and she finds him worming his way into the hearts of her family and herself, while dealing with racial problems in the urban streets.
A flim adaption aired in Nicklodeon in 2003, although it was lighter in comparsion with the book.
These are the following tropes:[]
- Badass: Maniac.
- Badass Bookworm: Amanda.
- Bratty Half Pints: Piper and Russell.
- Hester and Lester, to an extent.
- Cool Old Guy: Grayson.
- Dark and Troubled Past
- Death by Newbery Medal
- Death Glare: Mars Bar can cause a traffic jam just by doing this, according to legend.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Amanda gives Mars Bar one of these.Heres the quote"That's what I'm changing his name to.How bad(badass) can you act if someone calling you"--she said it loud--"Snickers?"
- Urban Racism: The West Enders hate the East Enders, and the opposite is true.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Jada Pinkett Smith is the narrator of the film adaption of Maniac Magee.
- Rip Torn is George Mcnab.
- Orlando Brown AKA Cornelius Filmore is Mars Bar.
- Heroic BSOD: Maniac suffers this after the birthday party fiasco.
- Jerkass: John Mcnab, George Mcnab, Mars Bar for the most parts of the book.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mars Bar becomes this after saving Russell from being run over.
- Loners Are Freaks: Averted. Maniac just wants to be accepted by everyone.
- Memetic Mutation: In-universe, Maniac's exploits become the subject of a jumprope chant.
- The Messiah: Maniac.
- Meganekko: Amanda.
- Naive Newcomer: Maniac, at first.
- No Accounting for Taste: 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 that finally make Maniac just snap and run as far away as he can from them.
- No Communities Were Harmed
- Parental Abandonment: Maniac's parents died in a car crash.
- Sassy Black Girl: Amanda.
- Scary Black Boy: Mars Bar.
- The Rival: Mars Bar and Maniac.
- The Runaway: Maniac.
- Truth in Television: A street that divides a community neatly in half? St. Louis has it. It's not clear if Spinelli was referring to it specifically.
- Tsundere: Amanda.
- Only Known by Their Nickname:Mars Bar