Jerry Spinelli's Newberry Award-winning Maniac Magee tells the story of an extraordinary boy who breaks down racial walls in a segregated town while he searches for a home of his own. The story is framed as a "truth behind the legend," though some of Maniac's accomplishments are so implausible that they took me out of the story. ("Frog baseball" made me particularly uncomfortable -- Poor frog!) My favorite moments are the small, character-driven scenes when Maniac tries to feel at home in surprising places and with surprising family, and my favorite character by a mile is young Amanda, a fearless child who loves to read so much that she carries all of her books in a suitcase everywhere she goes so that her younger siblings won't destroy them.
This book is funny, touching, and sad. The only other Jerry Spinelli books that I have read are Stargirl and Eggs, and this is my favorite of the three.
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