Muhlenberg Cabins Rear

Muhlenberg Cabins Rear, a photo by Valley Forge National Park on Flickr.

Maniac Magee offers many opportunities for teachers to connect with other content areas such as history and social science. In the story, Maniac Magee takes shelter at the Muhlenberg Cabins in Valley Forge National Park in Pennsylvania. It is an opportunity for teachers to review the Revolutionary War and explain about the challenges that the Continental Army had to overcome while stationary in that Valley.
From this location, twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia, the army was close enough to maintain pressure on the British yet far enough away to prevent a surprise attack. While the soldiers who entered camp on December 19, 1777, were not well-supplied, they were not downtrodden. This is attested to by an anonymous observer who recounted his visit to Valley Forge in the New Jersey Gazette on December 25:
“I have just returned from spending a few days with the army. I found them employed in building little huts for their winter quarters. It was natural to expect that they wished for more comfortable accommodations, after the hardships of a most severe campaign; but I could discover nothing like a sigh of discontent at their situation…On the contrary, my ears were agreeably struck every evening, in riding through the camp, with a variety of military and patriotic songs and every countenance I saw, wore the appearance of cheerfulness or satisfaction.”- http://www.nps.gov/vafo/historyculture/index.htm

Setting examples

The characters of Spinelli’s novels are very captivating because they address the common feeling and anxiety that every schoolchild has of finding friends and conforming to peer pressure. Moreover, Spinelli’s characters, Maniac Magee, Susan Stargirl Caraway, and Palmer LaRue (Wringer) share the same mantra of being distinct from their social peers. At the same time that they are not considered pariahs, they confront difficulties adapting and behaving to their peers’ expectations. This certainly resonate to the middle school students who struggle to be accepted by a group just like Stargirl did, and/or to others who, just like Palmer LaRue, engage in activities that contradict with their principles because they want to be accepted by a larger group. These characters become empowering examples for students to find their own voice, their own path in spite of others’ choices. I believe that these are very engaging books, which speak directly to the anxieties and dilemmas of everyday middle school students, and as such, are excellent choices for literature circles, author study, or read-alouds. 

Love, Stargirl website

This is the Love, Stargirl website. There is information and activities about the book as well as fun facts and info about Jerry Spinelli.

http://www.randomhouse.com/teens/stargirl/home.html

Winter Solstice

Stargirl is very in tune with nature and the cycles of the earth. A big part of her life was following the seasons. This included the summer and winter solstice. In Love, Stargirl she even woke up each morning before sunrise to mark a calendar, and held a huge winter equinox celebration! Here are some links to more information, as well as a few diagrams, about winter solstice.

http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-solstice-winter.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091218-winter-solstice-date-2010-solstices-first-day-winter/

A diagram of the earth and sun's placement throughout the year. Winter solstice is on the right.

A picture of exposures from one day showing the sun's position during the winter solstice. When viewed from northern latitudes, the Sun will make its lowest arc through the sky along the southern horizon. This results in the shortest amount of time in between sunrise and sunset, and the fewest hours of daylight.

Craft move: the altering of font

Another craft move noticed in Stargirl, Maniac Magee, and Wringer is Spinelli’s altering of the font for specific purposes. When I say altering of the font, I am talking about the look of letters, the size of letters, and placement of words.

Stargirl shows how Spinelli alters the size of letters and placement of words when he writes, “As we approached, she held up a sign, a huge cardboard sign bigger than a basketball backboard. She set the sign on edge an propped it up, erasing herself. The red painted letters said:

WAY TO GO,

SUSAN

WE’RE PROUD OF

                       YOU” (p. 159-160).

Another example of this is seen when Spinelli writes, “Painted on the sheet in broad red brush strokes was a Valentine heart enclosing the words:

STARGIRL

LOVES

                LEO” (p. 129).

This changing of font is also seen in Maniac Magee. For example, Spinelli writes, “Only the F had been scrubbed away. The rest was quite easy to read, the tall yellow letters the same color as the scrub bucket:

ISHBELLY GO HOME” (p. 68).

Finally, in Wringer an example is seen when Spinelli writes, “Finger-lettered in the chocolate icing along the side of the two-layer cake was a single word:

TONIGHT” (p. 167).

When reading Maniac Magee, readers notice that italics is used to show readers what words are emphasized when characters speak. For example, on page 61 when Maniac is questioned on whether he belongs in East End because of the color of his skin. Spinelli writes, “Maniac gave his answer: “I am home” (p. 61) and later on writes, “This is where I live” (p. 61). On that same page, font size is changed for emphasis. The man who is arguing with Maniac about whether he belongs says, “You got your own kind. It’s how you wanted it. Let’s keep it that way. NOW MOVE ON. Your kind’s waitin’” (pg. 61). By capitalizing that sentence readers can picture the man yelling extra loud when he said this. On page 65, showing which words characters place emphasis on when they speak is continued by Spinelli when Amanda tries to convince Maniac to remain living at her house. Spinelli writes, “‘I’ll go somewhere.’ ‘Somewhere? Like the deer pen?’” and “‘Well, what’re you gonna do for a pillow, huh? I know you put my pillow on the floor’” (p. 65). Also on page 65, is an example where the narrator uses italics to help express feelings of characters. Spinelli writes, “He was making her so mad!” By doing this, Spinelli reiterated how angry Amanda was at Maniac for wanting to leave because the italics show emphasis. Spinelli also uses italics in Stargirl to express that certain words are emphasized by characters when they speak like we do in everyday speech. For example on page 98, many sentences have one word emphasized, like “What did you think, people thought that was cute”, “It was her”, “he gestured defensively – ‘tell them’”, and “She was only a cheerleader”. Lastly, italics being used to show readers which words are emphasized is seen in Wringer when Spinelli writes, “What has gotten into you” (p. 146), “It’s not just you (p. 147), and “But I don’t want it to be over because then it’ll be closer to my birthday” (p.149), in addition to many other sentences.

Although all three books, Wringer, Stargirl, and Maniac Magee share the presence of the craft move of using italics to highlight parts of the text, the books have italics in different types of places. For example, whenever Spanish is spoken in Stargirl, italics are used. In Maniac Magee, hard to believe actions of characters are italicized. For example, Spinelli writes, “When the once-a-week freight train hit Elm Street, he started running from the Oriole Street Dead End – on one rail – and beat the train to the park, no-sweat” (p. 141). On that same page Spinelli writes, “The mysterious hole down by the creek, the one you would never reach into, even if you dropped your most valuable possession into it – he stuck his hand in, his arm in, all the way to the elbow, kept it there for the longest sixty seconds on record, and pulled it out, dirty, but still full of fingers” (p. 141). On a different page, Spinelli writes, “It wasn’t a trick. It was true. The kid was running on the rail” (p. 31).

            Going back to a use of italics seen in all three books, Spinelli mentions thoughts of characters with italics. For example, on page 39 in Wringer, Spinelli writes, “little Palmer thinking, “The boy wants it for a pet”. Looking at Maniac Magee, some examples of this are when Spinelli writes, “Live it up, thought Grayson” (p. 104) and “The minister, thought Maniac. That’s who we’re waiting for” (p. 117). One example of this in Stargirl is when Spinelli writes on page 9, “As she approached our table, I thought: What if she’s looking for me?” These uses of italics are used to help readers pay more attention to thoughts. There are many other uses of italics used by Spinelli throughout his books that I will not get into now.

Craft move: similes

A craft move noticed in Stargirl, Maniac Magee, and Wringer is Jerry Spinelli’s use of similes. I will first demonstrate this by listing the similes from Chapter 19 in Stargirl. Spinelli writes, “I ran my fingertip along the hard line of his two-inch jaw, rough like a cat’s tongue” (p. 101). Two pages later, Spinelli writes, “The pipe bowl, like some predator, or seducer, drew down the flame” (p. 103). Just two sentences after this, one reads, “Like so many of Archie’s words, they seemed not to enter through my ears but to settle on my skin, there to burrow like tiny eggs awaiting the rain of my maturity, when they would hatch and I at last would understand” (p. 103). Soon after this sentence, one reads, “The purple of the mountains flowed like watercolor” (p. 103). One page later, Spinelli writes, “Archie always spoke to him with respectful formality, as to a judge or visiting dignitary” (p. 104).

Some examples of similes being used in Maniac Magee are seen on page 32, page 71, and page 105. Spinelli writes, “The Cobras were laughing because they figured the dumb, scraggly runt would get out of the East End in about as good shape as a bare big toe in a convention of snapping turtles” (p. 32). Spinelli also writes, “his eyes lit up like flashcards” (p.71) and “The old man gave himself up willingly to his exhaustion and drifted off like a lazy, sky-high fly ball” (p. 105).

Some examples of similes seen in Wringer can be read on page 132, page 133, and page 203. Spinelli writes, “Daffodils clustered like bugle bands in front yards as the Beans Boys left school behind on a sunny, cloudless day” (p. 132). On page 133 Spinelli writes, “Palmer was about to throw his vote to baseball when suddenly the sunlight was briefly snipped, as if a page had been turned in front of a lightbulb” and “six eyes, round as tiny planets, stared”. One more example is seen on page 203 when Spinelli writes, “and his father was smiling and looking down, and his hands were opening like a flower”.

Jerry speaks about his personal struggles with being an author. After he realized his dreams of being a major league baseball player were not going to come true, he eventually became a writer. He describes his financial dilemmas and some important decisions he has faced. I wonder if and how this has affected his writing style over the years? It would be interesting to compare the writing of Stargirl to one of his earlier books.