YMMV / Maniac Magee

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Butterscotch Krimpets are made to sound so delicious that many kids reading the book thought they were made up. They aren't.
  • Mars Bar Thompson got his nickname from the candy bar which, at the time the of the book's publication, was available in the United States. It hasn't been sold since the Turn of the Millennium, reducing it to this trope since Americans have to be reminded about its existence.
• Angst? What Angst?: Maniac is quite happy, despite his parents being dead and his running away from home.
• Always Someone Better: Maniac is generally this to everyone else. He's faster than everyone, can do things that no else can such as untying a massive knot, and had no trouble smashing every one of McNab's pitches into the outfield despite the latter striking out thirty-five people in a row.
  • Grayson actually one-ups Maniac in the baseball category. His trick pitch, called the "stopball" is unhittable even for Maniac. He spends weeks of trying and never even manages more than a weak blooper.^note Maniac admits, though, that this may be more of him subconsciously trying to save Grayson's pride.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In the first chapter, Maniac loses his parents thanks to an intoxicated trolley driver. The narration makes it hard not to crack up, particularly "the whole kaboodle took a swan dive into the water."
• Heartwarming Moments: There's some moments, but the most memorable is Maniac finally finding a home and a family.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Grayson boasts that he can throw a "stopball", a pitch that can stop in midair. A few years later, Backyard Baseball came up with the "Big Freeze"; a special pitch that does just that before reaching home plate.
• Iron Woobie: Maniac.
• Memetic Badass: Maniac becomes one, in a way. The narrator certainly thinks so, and only breaks Suspension of Disbelief in an otherwise gritty tale when Maniac does something impressive. Maniac essentially defies or uncovers various urban legends that were deeply entrenched in that area's culture. In doing so, he becomes somewhat of an urban legend himself. The narrator paints him as being ambiguously superhuman, specifically saying in complete sincerity that Maniac could run across a portion of the US (two hundred miles) in under a week. He ends up actually taking a year to do so, and no one knows why.
  This period is known as The Lost Year.
• Moment of Awesome: Maniac untying a large knot, catching a mid-air baseball and a football pass...
• Nausea Fuel: The descriptions of the McNab house.
• Nightmare Fuel: No one has come back from the Finsterwald House...
  • Not to mention the state of the McNab house.
• Tear Jerker: Maniac finds a home with an old man, celebrates Christmas with him, and the next morning the old guy dies in his sleep.
  • The funeral is even worse. Maniac is the only one who shows up to actually mourn the man, despite having barely known him - everyone else is just treating the occasion with annoyance, openly grumbling to one another that they'd rather go have coffee and doughnuts and get out of the cold. Hell, not even the minister shows up.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Mars Bar Thompson's nickname for American readers since Mars Bars haven't been sold in the United States since the Turn of the Millennium.

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