Maniac Magee

Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee is orphaned as a small boy and raised by relatives who cannot stand each other. At twelve he runs away, and he keeps running until he arrives in Two Mills, Pennsylvania.

Two Mills is split down the middle: the East End is Black, the West End is white, and almost no one crosses between them. Maniac crosses anyway, as though the line were not there.

He becomes a local legend. He connects for a home run on a pitch that beats every other batter, picks apart a knot that nobody could undo, and runs so fast that tales of him travel ahead of him. Amanda Beale's family in the East End takes him in, and for a time he lives with an old zoo groundskeeper.

Everywhere he goes, people want him to pick a side. Maniac wants only a place that is truly his own, while Two Mills must work out how to respond to a boy who treats everyone alike.

The 1990 novel by Jerry Spinelli won the 1991 Newbery Medal. Tall-tale humor sits beside plain talk about racism, prejudice and homelessness, and the book is widely read in upper elementary and middle school classrooms.