Muggie Maggie

In these passages, the author’s humor and dramatic irony point the reader toward Mrs. Leeper’s real intentions, while Maggie herself is in the dark. Cleary quickly advances the plot by adding in a new problem for Maggie: decoding the teachers’ messages. Maggie puzzles over the letters, which are written in cursive on the book’s pages, inviting the young reader to use their own cursive reading skills to decode the messages from Mrs. Leeper, Mr. Galloway, and other teachers.

Cleary continues to build the theme of The Influence of Peer Relationships on Children, depicting Maggie’s social experiences as an important factor for why she finally learns to write in cursive. Maggie’s interactions with her friends and classmates reveal her desire to fit in and be admired as a clever student. Maggie is so protective of her reputation that she even keeps the truth from her best friend, Jo Ann. Rather than admitting that she cannot read cursive and needs to study it, Maggie pretends that she is too busy to play on the weekend. Lying to her friend makes her feel guilty, but Maggie is determined to not admit that she needs help.

By showing how Maggie navigates her failure to read cursive, these chapters develop the author’s theme of Learning From Failure. Maggie is alarmed at not being able to read cursive while her classmates can, and since Maggie believes that she is advanced compared to most students, she is not used to feeling behind. Her failure also prevents her from fulfilling her own goal of spying on the teachers’ messages, making her feel frustrated and left out. Ultimately, Maggie’s desire to be informed and keep up with her classmates motivates her to succeed and take her learning more seriously. By learning through her failure and deciding to cooperate, Maggie learns the academic lessons of cursive writing, as well as the life lesson to be more cooperative and flexible. Cleary writes,

She could now make her letters flow together, and she had made her teacher happy, but maybe when she grew up and did not have to please grown-ups all the time, she might decide not to write cursive. She could print anytime she wanted. She had plenty of time to think it over (66).

In her final chapters, the author also advances the theme of Children’s Expressions of Independence. Maggie, sensitive to criticism and wary of authority, is tired of being told what to do and wants to resist her parents’ and teacher’s instructions. In these chapters, she turns the tables on her parents, critiquing their penmanship according to the rules she learned from Mrs. Leeper. Taking the role of teacher, rather than student, allows Maggie to feel more grown-up and independent. Maggie also resents Mrs. Leeper’s plan to tempt her into reading cursive, feeling that this undermines her independence and her anti-cursive attitude. When she realizes that her teacher was being sneaky by making her the message monitor, “Maggie [i]s shocked. Maggie [i]s angry. Mrs. Leeper had guessed she would peek. Maybe she had guessed all along, and now that Maggie [can] read cursive, she [i]s saying mean things about her” (60). This ongoing theme makes Maggie a particularly relatable protagonist, as young readers will likely understand her impulse to express her independence and resist some of her parents’ and teacher’s rules.