Maniac Magee: Chapter 37 Summary & Analysis

Finsterwald’s is the first of many heroic feats Maniac performs. He races a freight train and wins; he walks barefoot through a rat-infested dump; he climbs into the buffalo pen at the zoo and kisses a baby buffalo (that one is his idea). He sees himself as paying Piper and Russell’s “tuition” to make sure they keep going to school. The boys, meanwhile, feel more and more important because of their association with Maniac. But one week, they give him “the most perilous challenge of all”—to enter the East End.