[1] The story follows twelve-year-old Jeffrey Lionel "Maniac" Magee, an orphaned runaway with many extraordinary and athletic talents, who arrives in a town divided with racial conflict.
She serves as the narrator of the movie and goes to tell the story of Maniac Magee who changed the town of Two Mills forever.
Two decades earlier, the parents of twelve-year-old Jeffrey Lionel Magee (Michael Angarano) are killed by a drunk driver.
Jeffrey skips a line of kids waiting to bat to take on Big John and manages to strike the ball so fast it disintegrates in the air.
On the East End, Jeffrey runs by a school and meets with a girl his age named Amanda Beale (Kyla Pratt), who is surprised to see him given his skin color.
Realizing she has a suitcase full of books, Jeffrey urges her to let him borrow one and promises to bring it back to her.
Jeffrey goes to read the book under a tree and catches the eye of Mars Bar Thompson (Orlando Brown) and his friend Bump Gilliam (Shan Elliot).
When Amanda asks if he can stay for dinner, her mother refuses until her younger children, twins Hester and Lester, beg her otherwise.
Hester and Lester promote Jeffrey's ability to untie knots to the other children in the neighborhood who come by to see him over by Amanda's tent.
The next day, Mr. Cobble lets Jeffrey perform the task of untying the knot ball which he does successfully and amazes the Easties.
Jeffrey crosses over to the West End and goes to sleep out in the woods near a trail and finds Piper and Russell, who are running away to Mexico.
They go home to see Mr. McNab (Rip Torn) preparing for war if the East End residents were to try to conquer their side, keeping a stash of many cans of beans and prunes in his house feeling the Easties will try to come over and take them.
After taking Russell and Piper to the zoo and coming home and seeing them and their dad performing a drill to attack the Easties, he decides to head over to the East End.
The movie circles back to the present with the narrator telling the story to the kids she saw playing jump rope.