loss

By the time Binny is eleven years old she has lived in two worlds. A child's world, and a time-to-start-growing-up-now world. An easy world, and a hard world. The first world held Binny; her mother and father; her big sister, Clem; and her little brother, James. And Max, the best dog in the whole world. But after her father's death, money was tight, and Binny's world became cramped apartments with no room for Max. So horrible Aunty Violet stepped in and gave Max away.

He came into this world named Jeffrey Lionel Magee, but when his parents died, his life changed and so did his name.

And Maniac Magee became a legend.

Even today kids talk about how fast he could run, about how he hit an inside-the-park "frog" homer, and about how no knot, no matter how snarled, would stay that way once he began to untie it.