Jerry Spinelli is best known for his Newberry Award winning Maniac Magee. This book however is just one of his many popular titles written for young adults. While most of his books are humorous and filled with funny outtakes of middle school life, he also touches on several very serious social issues.

Mr. Spinelli was born and still lives in Pennsylvania. He is married, has five children, and numerous grandchildren. His family has provided him with many of the ideas used in his writing. When accepting the Newberry Award he claimed that he didn't even have to look outside his own house for inspiration when writing his first two books.

Click here for an address where you can write to Mr. Spinelli !!

Dear Kids,

When the title character of my novel Maniac Magee bunts a frog for a homerun against the fearsome McNab, the last thing he does before fleeing the field is to pick up his book. This is the closest I could come to correcting a mistake I made when I myself was a kid and summers were baseball...baseball...baseball. Countless times I picked up a bat and a ball--almost never a book. Now I wish I had. And that's why Maniac does what I should have done. Don't make my mistake. Play and read