Muggie Maggie

Maggie is a third-grade girl and the protagonist of Muggie Maggie. One of Maggie’s defining features is her curly hair, which she tosses when she’s feeling annoyed. The author characterizes Maggie as a clever student who strives to be accomplished and hopes that others recognize her intelligence. Maggie is highly confident in her abilities. She is “indignant” when her teacher suggests that she is too immature to write cursive.

Maggie can be very prideful and stubborn, and these character flaws advance the plot of the novel, as Maggie arbitrarily refuses to learn cursive to spite her parents. Even when Maggie realizes that she should not have wasted so much time and energy refusing to write cursive, she still doesn’t want to admit to her parents that she was wrong.

Maggie’s pride and confidence are a part of her longing for independence. She sometimes resists the authority of her teachers and parents and tries to do things by her own rules instead. Instead of interpreting her parents’ and teacher’s instructions as useful advice, Maggie feels that adults in her life are “picking on her” (40). In the book, Maggie has to learn from failure as she slowly overcomes her stubbornness about learning cursive and begins to feel genuinely interested in it.