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Prepare yourself for some off-the-cuff book talk as I tackle another middle grade book, Chapter by Chapter.
This is MJ. Welcome to my Chapter by Chapter discussion of, or review of Maniac McGee.
I'm talking about Chapter 2, which is the third chapter because there's the intro, then Chapter 1, then Chapter 2.
So, in this chapter, probably the biggest, most important thing is that...
There's probably two key factors. One is that supposedly, according to the narrator,
10,000 people say that they met Maniac McGee on the outskirts of town or at the border of town when he came to Twin Falls.
Is that what it's called? Twin Falls, Twin Peaks? No, it's not Twin Peaks. I think it's Twin Falls.
Oh, Twin Mills, that's what it is. Yeah.
So, when he came to Twin Mills, supposedly, everybody says they knew him or saw him come in.
But that's not true, according to the narrator. There would have only been a few people, like a handful of people.
And the thing that they noticed about him that was peculiar was that as he jogged by, he said hi.
And apparently nobody said hi to each other in Twin Mills.
Now, I don't know the character of this town yet. I know that the book is supposed to be dealing with racism,
so I don't know if that's because he's a white kid that maybe he ran past black folk at first.
And that's why it would have been strange for him to say hi.
And I haven't been to Pennsylvania yet, but I'm in the Midwest now.
And I would say it's much friendlier here than it is on the West Coast, for example, where I originally come from.
And I would think Pennsylvania would have been even friendlier.
You know, 20 years ago, well, no, 20 years ago. It's been so long since the 90s, I don't remember.
But in the 90s, I'm sure it would have been much nicer.
And I would think the author's perspective would have been from having grown up in the 70s or whatever.
And I would think that since the Civil Rights Act was in, what, 1969, that this book probably takes place after that or around that time.
I think, at least for a while, at least this is my impression of the past, that at some point, the farther back you go, the friendlier people were.
So that kind of doesn't match my perception of the past.
But this is a narrative about a certain town.
So I guess that could be just the character of the town.
But yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Definitely, it's still strange. This is a very short chapter.
I'm almost having trouble with how short the chapters are. It's 45 chapters long.
I don't know if there's an epilogue or not.
There might be. Some of them are longer than these current chapters, like, you know, seven minutes, 10 minutes, that kind of thing.
I think I saw as I looked through them real quick.
But a lot of them are short. This one was two and change, which is kind of crazy.
I think chapter one was like three something, actually.
So I don't know. I'm going to do that. But I guess, you know, bit by bit.
So it's kind of interesting, kind of strange how short the chapters are and how quick things are going on.
I even feel I feel like even for kids, like a good 10 minute or 15 minute chapter length is appropriate and good and beneficial.
And like, that's kind of the perfect chapter length.
The Oz books, which I love, all of those are about like every now and then you're like a six minute chapter.
But for the most part, I would say the average 10 minutes, if not a little bit longer.
Well, probably the whole average, if you take all 14 of the original bomb books, it's probably like a nine minute average, because there's some short chapters and that mixed in there.
And then there's a long chapter so that the average would be somewhere around there.
But these chapters are a little a little too short. So that's kind of not wonderful.
But yeah, I really don't know what to say. Like I'm straining to try to say something about this chapter.
I did like the description of his shoes after running 200 miles in them over the course of a week that they were like the front of them were hinging on or they were like they're hinged in the back, right?
Like they're hanging on in the back and in the front, they're coming off completely like the sole is flapping as he's jogging.
And, you know, I was a kid and I had that happen to shoes from time to time, mostly one shoe more than the other and not from running such long distances just from normal wear and tear.
But like that's definitely a kid thing like you can identify with that as a kid. So that's fun.
And I do like that. But yeah, I'm still giving this book a fair shot.
I think it's just it's taken some time. Let's see what happens when we get maybe like, you know, 10 chapters in.
We'll see where that because that's that'll be a well, it's 45. We'll say we'll still 10 chapters is roughly a quarter of the book.
Not quite less than 20 percent. So we'll see.
I don't think a book should take more than more than a quarter or a fifth to really get you into it because books can be long and it's a big investment in your life.
You don't want to spend all this time to to not be hooked by it.
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Until next time, keep reading, be well and do good things.
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