Next, Maniac saves a boy caught in the backyard of the mysterious Finsterwald house. Maniac desperately tries to retrieve the book and is unsuccessful.
In the middle of the scene, Amanda shows up and scolds Mars while demanding he return the book. She brings Maniac into her home where he is introduced to the Beale family. After a run in with a bitter old gentleman and a racial slur being painted on the Beale home, Maniac decides he must move out.
In the middle of the celebration, Amanda realizes the falling confetti is made from one of her precious books. With no place to go, Maniac begins living in the buffalo pen at the zoo. A maintenance worker named Grayson discovers Maniac one evening while making his rounds. Grayson, a former minor league baseball player, looks after Maniac and helps him find an empty baseball closet to live in. In return, Maniac provides companionship and helps Grayson learn to read.
The two develop a very close bond, but after celebrating the holidays together Grayson dies. Depressed and freezing, Maniac goes to a Valley Forge historical site to wither away.
One morning, he discovers two children are also living at the site. The two boys, Piper and Russell, have run away to escape school and their chaotic home life. Maniac, sensing someone must be looking for the boys, tricks them into going back home. The McNab home is dirty and in a state of utter chaos. In addition, the family is preparing for what they believe to be an impending East End rebellion. All the while, Maniac attempts to keep the two young boys under control and keep them in school.
After the party debacle, Maniac moves back to the zoo and continues to live his typical nomadic lifestyle. While running one morning, he realizes that Mars is following him. This continues until one day an hysterical Piper McNab approaches the two boys. Maniac and Mars follow Piper to a train trestle where Russell is trapped and fearful of an approaching train.
Maniac, remembering the tragic accident that killed his parents, blacks out and leaves the scene. Two days later, Maniac finds Mars in the buffalo pen where he is sleeping. He questions why Maniac fled the scene at the train trestle.
He runs for a couple hundred miles and a year , and ends up in Two Mills, Pennsylvania. Maniac doesn't know it yet, but Two Mills is a divided town. Okay, well, maybe the name should have been a clue.
Maniac's first stop is the East End, where he meets Amanda Beale and her suitcase of books. Maniac goes back and forth between the East and West End, making a few friends, but mostly enemies, and for some reason never really noticing that the West End is entirely white and the East End is entirely black. When the Beales realizes that Maniac is homeless, they take him in as a member of their family. Life is great for a while, but eventually the East Enders start getting him down.
See, not everyone loves the idea of a white kid living with a black family in a black neighborhood. So Maniac after a quick detour solving Cobble's Knot takes off. Long story short, he moves in with a buffalo family and then meets Earl Grayson, a washed-up former minor leaguer. Things are really hunky dory for a while: Maniac's got a dad, Grayson learns to read, they celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And then Grayson dies. He ends up staying at the McNabs' house, wondering why he is there. It is a roof over his head, but it isn't a home or a family. After Maniac manipulates Mars Bar into going to the McNabs', he walks around until he thinks he should go home — only to sadly remember that he doesn't have a home.
Maniac is found by Mars Bar and Amanda as he is sleeping once again in the buffalo pen at the zoo. Amanda insists that Maniac "come home. Racial prejudice is another major theme of Maniac Magee. When Maniac jogs into Two Mills, he says "hi" to everyone he passes.
The people are taken aback because "people just didn't say that to strangers, out of the blue. In Two Mills, the racial line, or boundary, between the blacks and whites is Hector Street. The blacks live in the East End and the whites live in the West End. When Maniac meets Amanda Beale, a black girl, she is suspicious of him. She wonders what a white kid is doing in the East End. Maniac is oblivious to the difference in their skin color.
He and Amanda share an interest in books and become friends. Maniac lives with the Beales and is accepted as part of the family. The image of Maniac taking a bath with Hester and Lester Beale portrays the joining of the races to live together as family and Spinelli's ultimate hope for desegregation and an end to racial prejudice. The color of someone's skin is not a problem for Maniac.
He loves the colors of the people in the East End. He "[can't] see it, this color business. He is called "whitey" by the old ragpicker, "fishbelly" by Mars Bar, and a racial epithet is scrawled on the Beale's house attacking Maniac because he is not black. Spinelli portrays the ignorance people have about races different from their own. Maniac is harassed by Mars Bar and does the unthink-able — he takes a bite of Mars Bar's candy, biting over the exact spot where Mars Bar had bitten.
It is as though "black germs" or "white germs" are deadly to the opposite race.
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