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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book for learning about courage, 25 Jan 1999
By A Customer
In Maniac Magee, author Jerry Spinelli gives us an unflinching first-person account of a homeless boy, Jeffrey, and how he learns to cope with prejudice and racism. Orphaned at age three when his parents die in a railroad crash, Jeffrey runs away from the unhappily married relatives he has been living with for eight difficult years. Jeffrey is a larger-than-life character whose amazing skills as a runner, a person who can untie any knot, and hit fastballs like few who have come before, are the stuff of local legend. But what students find most compelling is the way Jeffrey interacts with the assorted characters he meets in his travels and how, through summoning his own courage, Jeffrey is able to help resolve long-standing racial tensions between two towns. Teachers and curriculum directors in the Boston Public Schools have been so impressed by the powerful themes in Taking Sides that they have selected it as one of six core novels for sixth graders as part of the Max Warburg Courage Curriculum. The other five novels are: Taking Sides, Number the Stars, Bridge to Terabithia, So Far from the Bamboo Grove, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. As with Maniac Magee, each novel addresses the theme of courage--different types of courage, what it takes to act courageously, and how even small acts of courage can have enormous consequences in everyday life. I highly recommend Maniac Magee as a book that will offer adolescent readers new insights into prejudice and how, with perseverance, it can be overcome.
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