Maniac Magee Vocabulary Worksheets
Chapters 38-46
Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Context Clues
Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence.
Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what
you think the underlined words mean on the lines provided.
1. They halted at the curb.
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2. His only recollection was a feeling of sheer, joyful exuberance, himself in celebration:
shouting "Amen!" in the Bethany Church.
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3. Maniac kept moving, embarrassed, wishing he could just break out and sprint for the West
End, wishing he could duck into the Beales' house and be sanctuaried there and not fear reprisals
on them.
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4. The reunion had been ecstatic and fearful and nonstop happy, and inside he was pure July.
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5. Maniac couldn't help laughing. In spite of their twisted, ludicrous impressions of East Enders,
the concern and the tears in their eyes had been genuine.
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6. He could always extort a day or two in class from them with the free weekly pizza.
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7. It was a maddening, chaotic time for Maniac.
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8. Running in the mornings and reading in the afternoons gave him just enough stability to
endure the zany nights at the McNabs'.
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9. Running in the mornings and reading in the afternoons gave him just enough stability to
endure the zany nights at the McNabs'.
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10. In some vague way, to abandon the McNab boys would be to abandon something in himself.
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11. Maniac could feel the voltage that surged through Mars Bars and crackled black lightning
from his eyes.
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12. Mars Bar allowed himself to be dragged into them, but his jaw was clenched and his eyes
kept straying to the gaping hole in the ceiling--and to the Cobras, who were slouching against the
walls and baseboards, sipping beers and watching his every move.
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13. The Cobras stayed, and Maniac, clamping the struggling Mars Bar for dear life, lugged him
down a gauntlet of seething eyes to the door and the street.
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14. The Cobras stayed, and Maniac, clamping the struggling Mars Bar for dear life, lugged him
down a gauntlet of seething eyes to the door and the street.
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15. Mars Bar wrenched free and stomped on ahead.
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16. It may have been an illusion, but it seemed that the hungrier he got, the farther Mrs.
Pickwell's whistle traveled.
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17. This was the first in a series of apparently random mergings.
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18. Though each face showed no awareness of the other, they were in fact minutely sensitive to
each other.
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Part II: Determining the Meaning Match the vocabulary words to their dictionary definitions.
1. ____ halted
A. dependability
2. ____ exuberance
B. ridiculous
3. ____ reprisals
C. enthusiasm
4. ____ ecstatic
D. to bear with tolerance
5. ____ ludicrous
E. overjoyed
6. ____ extort
F. disorderly
7. ____ chaotic
G. unspecified
8. ____ stability
H. revenge
9. ____ endure
I. to get by threats
10. ___ vague
J. stopped
11. ___ surged
K. without a specific pattern
12. ___ clenched
L. moved like waves
13. ___ gauntlet
M. violently excited
14. ___ seething
N. grasped tightly
15. ___ wrenched
O. fantasy; false belief
16. ___ illusion
P. an attack from all sides
17. ___ random
Q. concerned with small details
18. ___ minutely
R. twisted
Part III:
Write a sentence for each vocabulary word. Be sure to vary your sentences by making some
simple, some compound, and some complex sentences (We will be discussing this type this
week). You may use two vocabulary words in a sentence. Be sure to proofread your sentences!
Your vocabulary words must fit together in a proper context so that your sentences make sense.