trolley- a streetcar

1
Jerry Spinelli
Biography by Scholastic
Book List
Question and Answer Interview
2
Maniac Magee Part IVocabulary
3
maniac

• a madman
• a lunatic
• crazy person
• a person that is wildly enthusiastic about
  something.
• Example

4
legacy

• something left to a person, a history of them
• your remembered by something
• important people tend to leave a legacy
• Examples George Washington, Babe Ruth, Michael
  Jackson

5
trolley- a streetcar

• Maniacs parents took the P W high-speed
  trolley into the city.

6
bellowing - shouting angrily

• Jeffrey was bellowing out in the middle of the
  concert to his Aunt and Uncle.

7
commotion - pandemonium, chaos, noisy confusion

• There was a commotion in the West End at 803
  Oriole Street.

8
infamous - having an evil reputation

• 803 Oriole Street is considered to be the
  infamous address of Finsterwald.

9
suffice - to be enough

• Suffice it to say that occasionally if you see
  some poor raggedy kid shuffling through town,
  word would spread that this was once a bright,
  happy child who had the misfortune of going into
  Finsterwalds yard.

10
hoist - to lift

• Arnold Jones was being hoisted in the air above
  Finsterwalds backyard fence.

11
flinched - to draw back, as in from pain

• As the baseball came towards McNab, he flinched
  just in time.

12
pandemonium - a wild uproar

• Three more pitches. Three more home runs.
  Pandemonium on the sidelines. It was raining red
  and green hats!

13
solitude - being alone

• Maniac loved the silence and solitude of his
  early morning runs with Bow Wow.

14
converge - to come together

• The East End converged for a Fourth of July block
  party.

15
poleax - to strike with great force

• Maniac could poleax a stickball like a
  twelfth-grader and catch a football like Hands
  Down.

16
unbeknownst - unknown

• Unbeknownst to Amanda, Maniac always found her
  encyclopedia A and read it.

17
hibernate - to spend the winter in sleep

• Maniac told Amanda he would use a hibernating
  gopher to use as a pillow.

18
sneer - to show contempt with words or expression

• Amanda sneered at Maniac when she was angry with
  him.

19
eons - thousands of years

• Eons later when Maniac came to town, Cobbles
  Corner Grocery store was still there.

20
contortions - twists and turns

• The knot was made of string but it had more
  contortions than the brain of Albert Einstein.

21
Irony

• deliberate expressing ideas so they could be
  understood in two ways
• reality is different than what happens or from
  our expectations
• ex. Maniac is allergic to pizza and the prize for
  untying Cobbles knot was pizza.