jason and marceline [Paperback]

jerry spinelli (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Little Brown; First Edition, name inked on Pages Edge edition (1986)
• ASIN: B000OUDGD4
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Growing up, Jerry Spinelli was really serious about baseball. He played for the Green Sox Little League team in his hometown of Norristown, Pennsylvania, and dreamed of one day playing for the major leagues, preferably as shortstop for the New York Yankees.

One night during high school, Spinelli watched the football team win an exciting game against one of the best teams in the country. While everyone else rode about town tooting horns in celebration, Spinelli went home and wrote "Goal to Go," a poem about the game's defining moment, a goal-line stand. His father submitted the poem to the Norristown Times-Herald and it was featured in the middle of the sports page a few days later. He then traded in his baseball bat for a pencil, because he knew that he wanted to become a writer.

After graduating from Gettysburg College with an English degree, Spinelli worked full time as a magazine editor. Every day on his lunch hour, he would close his office door and craft novels on yellow magazine copy paper. He wrote four adult novels in 12 years of lunchtime writing, but none of these were accepted for publication. When he submitted a fifth novel about a 13-year-old boy, adult publishers once again rejected his work, but children's publishers embraced it. Spinelli feels that he accidentally became an author of children's books.

Spinelli's hilarious books entertain both children and young adults. Readers see his life in his autobiography Knots in My Yo-Yo String, as well as in his fiction. Crash came out of his desire to include the beloved Penn Relays of his home state of Pennsylvania in a book, while Maniac Magee is set in a fictional town based on his own hometown.

When asked if he does research for his writing, Spinelli says: "The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first 15 years of my life turned out to be one big research project. I thought I was simply growing up in Norristown, Pennsylvania; looking back now I can see that I was also gathering material that would one day find its way into my books."

On inspiration, the author says: "Ideas come from ordinary, everyday life. And from imagination. And from feelings. And from memories. Memories of dust in my sneakers and humming whitewalls down a hill called Monkey."

Spinelli lives with his wife and fellow writer, Eileen, in West Chester, Pennsylvania. While they write in separate rooms of the house, the couple edits and celebrates one another's work. Their six children have given Jerry Spinelli a plethora of clever material for his writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars As a teacher, this is one book I won't have on my shelf., June 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Jason and Marceline (Paperback)

I am a 7th grade reading teacher, and I have read both Space Station Seventh Grade and its sequel Jason and Marceline. Space Station Seventh Grade is a good book and is very true to life in middle school. Jason and Marceline consists of guys talking about who's "doing it" and the size of girls' breasts and how they'd like to get their hands on them. This may be the type of conversation that goes on in middle school, but I think it is demeaning to the girls. The book summary on Amazon.com says that Jason is surprised to find that Marceline rejects him, but that's not quite the whole story. Jason pressures Marceline to let him give her a hickey, and he gets angry and stomps off when she won't let him. They finally get back together, and she makes him promise he won't give her a hickey. I'm concerned that the message it sends is that girls who don't give in to their boyfriends will lose them, and that's not a message I want to endorse.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book- but careful who reads it, November 15, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Jason and Marceline (Paperback)

Jason and Marceline was such and awesome book, telling about a Jason's relationship with his girlfriend. the book talks about people a little bit older then me, but i still connected with it. I would recommend this book to kids 13 or older, just because it deals with somethings that are inappropriate for younger kids. it goes a little farther then just dating, into kissing and things like that. Even then, i would hope that every teen reads this great book!!!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jason and Marceline not for everyone, but wait a minute..., July 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Jason and Marceline (Paperback)

I teach middle-school Language Arts, and, while I wouldn't necessarily read this book WITH my class, I would recommend it to students to read for outside reading. Spinelli is a master with the written word; I read the majority of his books as a teenager and will reread them on occasion even now. I must disagree with the teacher who felt Spinelli's portrayal of girls in Jason and Marceline was poor. In the end, Jason learns that Jason must be Jason and Marceline must be Marceline. He learns to accept her as she is--eccentricities and all. Jason is flawed, and he is definitely not politically correct. (Name a middle schooler who is!) Regardless, Spinelli can somehow recapture the ambivalence of adolescence while possessing the wisdom of an adult...the mark of a truly gifted writer.