Amanda Beale is a young black girl who attends elementary school in the East End. She has a small library of books that she is "finicky about." To prevent her brother, sister, and dog from ruining her books, she carries them to school everyday in a suitcase. Her most prized possession is her Volume A of an encyclopedia.
Amanda is a friendly and generous person. Even though she is suspicious of Maniac, a white stranger, she loans him one of her books and later defends him and invites him to her home. She gives up her room so Maniac can live with her family and she shares her books with him.
Like Maniac, Amanda is not prejudiced towards the opposite race. She loves him as a brother despite his white skin color. Amanda tries to protect Maniac from the cruelty of discrimination by preventing him from seeing the racial epithet that is written on the side of the Beales' house. She is hurt when Maniac leaves. At the conclusion of the novel, Amanda accompanies Mars Bar to the zoo (where Maniac is sleeping) to urge Maniac to return to the Beales' house to live. She tells Maniac that he is going home with her and he is "going to sleep there tonight and tomorrow night and the night after that and every night. . . ."
