Theme Post II

Another main theme/issue that Jerry Spinelli is trying to talk about is homelessness. Right from the beggining it says Maniac ran away, and he was living on the streets. He was looking for a place to live and he ended up in Two Mills(Spinelli 8). So in that sentence, it seems that Spinelli is trying to incorperate the issue of homelessness. The book says that when people saw Maniac Magee coming into Two Mills he looked very dirty and unsanitary. It says, "a scraggly little kid jogging toward them, the soles of both sneakers hanging by their hinges and flopping open like dog tounges each time they came up from the pavement" (Spinelli 9). So what the author is trying to say is Jeffrey looked like a hobo, and he probably did so because of living on the streets for so long. Isn't that how it is today also? Where we have people who just look so worn out and unpleasent because they don't have a place for them to call home. That is a big issue in our society today and it definitly looks like Spinelli is trying to exsplain that to us. That's why I think that homelessness is another main issue in the story Maniac Magee.

Spinelli, Jerry. Maniac Magee. Boston: Little, Brown Young Readers, 1999. Print.