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
BY JERRY SPINELLI
"...just be careful not to get the facts mixed up with the truth."- Maniac Magee quote
“You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies! Love and Love and Love Again, Stargirl.” - Love, Stargirl
“She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow
of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly,
but the pin merely went through and away she flew.” - Stargirl
"He did not want to be a wringer. This was one of the first things he had learned about himself. He could not have said exactly when he learned it, but it was very early. And more than early, it was deep inside. In the stomach like hunger." - Wringer
“She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow
of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly,
but the pin merely went through and away she flew.” - Stargirl
"He did not want to be a wringer. This was one of the first things he had learned about himself. He could not have said exactly when he learned it, but it was very early. And more than early, it was deep inside. In the stomach like hunger." - Wringer
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Muhlenberg Cabins Rear
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