Maniac's first stay is with a black family, but after racist graffiti is spray-painted on their house, he leaves. He spends several happy months with an old man in a park equipment room, but the man eventually dies.
Maniac then moves in with a white family, but finds the house filled with roaches, alcohol, and cursing. Maniac then attempts his greatest feat: initiating better relations between blacks and whites in Two Mills. Although some critics felt that Spinelli dilutes his message about the absurdity of racism by presenting Maniac Magee as a fable, others cited the author's focus on such an incident as noteworthy.
In Crash a smug jock is transformed into a more empathetic young person. Seventh-grader Crash Coogan has the athletic ability of Maniac Magee but nowhere near the same sensitivity to others. He bullies kids smaller than he, including Penn Webb, a target since first grade; he even threatens a girl who rejects his romantic advances.
Crash is competitive about everything, and it is not until his beloved grandfather suffers a life-threatening stroke that the teen begins to show some humanity. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that, "without being preachy, Spinelli packs a powerful moral wallop, leaving it to the pitch-perfect narration to drive home his point. Stargirl focuses on nonconformity and popularity. When the eponymous protagonist enters all-white middle-class Mica High School, she attracts considerable notice for her off-beat behavior, odd clothing, and her habit of cheering for both sides after making the cheerleading squad.
Though Stargirl is initially admired, when she does not conform to the culture of her new school she finds herself "dropped" by her supposed friends. Some reviewers found the novel one-dimensional and heavy-handed; as Ilene Cooper noted in Booklist, Spinelli's protagonist is so unbelievable that "readers may feel more sympathy for the bourgeois teens than the earnest, kind, magic Stargirl. Other novels that chronicle the perils of the middle grades include There's a Girl in My Hammerlock, which finds eighth-grader Maisie Potter trying out for the school wrestling team.
The school allows her to participate, but Maisie encounters various roadblocks, including her teammates' jealousy about the media attention she receives. Sunny is a grump, Eddie is something of a wimp who is in love with Sunny, Salem is an aspiring writer, and Pickles is. Spinelli's award winning novel Loser finds goofy, awkward Donald Zinkoff slowly transforming from class clown to class loser as he moves from elementary school into middle school.
Despite the taunts and barbs of his critical classmates, Donald maintains a "what, me worry? Peter D. Sieruta noted in a Horn Book review that through the novel's "present-tense, omniscient narrative," readers are introduced to another one of "Spinelli's larger-than-life protagonists," and praised the novel as "a wonderful character study. A library card becomes the ticket out of mundane and often impoverished lives for four youngsters in a group of interlinking stories published as The Library Card.
Shoplifting Mongoose leaves his thieving ways behind when he enters a library for the first time and discovers a world of facts; Brenda is a TV addict who discovers a new world of invention in books; Sonseray recaptures memories of his mother in an adult romance title; a hijacker even falls under the spell of books in a bookmobile.
A Publishers Weekly critic felt that "while the premise the card behind the stories may seem contrived, the author uses it effectively" to create "four vaguely unsettling tales. Spinelli has continued to create a body of amusing and fast-reading work for both young adult and younger readers. Fourth Grade Rats focuses on peer pressure and growing up too fast.
The main characters are Suds and Joey, friends who decide they have to become tough and mean now that they are entering fourth grade. Niceguy Suds initially balks at the plan, but Joey's relentless needling persuades him to reconsider. The experiment is short-lived, however, as both boys are forced to resume their normal behavior—and relieved when this happens.
Tooter Pepperday and its sequel, Blue Ribbon Tales, feature a reluctant young transplant to suburbia and her adventures adapting to her new environment. When Spinelli wasn't in school, he spent time riding his bicycle, skimming stones across Stony Creek, flipping baseball cards, and running on the railroad tracks behind their house.
Spinelli was always involved in one sport or another — he played basketball, track and field, football, and Little League baseball he always wanted to be a major league baseball player. Spinelli didn't read much as a child because he was always too busy playing sports. He reserved reading for times when he was "bored.
He also read books by Clair Bee who wrote a series of books about Chip Hilton, a high school athlete. When Spinelli was in the ninth grade, he felt as though he was on top of the world. He was class president, king of the ninth grade prom, and had a girlfriend. Everything changed when his family moved to a new house.
He still attended the same school and had the same friends, but he no longer felt the same. The old neighborhood had been Spinelli's world for ten years, and he missed it terribly.
Spinelli felt lost. That same year, Spinelli's high school football team won a big game. After the game, he went home and wrote a poem about the game. Jerry Spinelli won the Newbery Medal in for Maniac Magee , one of his more than 25 acclaimed books for young readers. He now lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Eileen Spinelli, who is also an author of children's books. Shop books by Jerry Spinelli below! You can find all books and activities at The Teachers Store.
He came into this world named Jeffrey Lionel Magee, but when his parents died and his life changed, so did his name.
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