Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Bud, Not Buddy
by Christopher Paul Curtis

This book won the 2000 Newbery Medal for "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children" and the award is well-deserved.

Set in Flint and Grand Rapids Michigan in 1936, the story covers three tumultuous days in the life of Bud Caldwell, orphan, age 10. Bud's single mom died when he was six and he has lived in the orphanage and various foster homes since. Bud's already wise to the system. So wise that he can feel sorry for the six-year-old who's being sent to a foster home in the most recent "deployment" from the orphange.

...Six is a real tough age to be at. Most folks think you start to be a real adult when you're fifteen or sixteen years old, but that's not true, it really starts when you're around six.

It's at six that grown folks don't think you're a cute little kid anymore, they talk to you and expect you to understand everything they mean. And you'd best understand too, if you aren't looking for some real trouble, 'cause it's around six that grown folks stop giving you little swats and taps and jump clean up to giving you slugs that'll knock you right down and have you seeing stars in the middle of the day. The first foster home I was in taught me that real quick.

(If that doesn't break your heart, what will?) To cope with his world in which children must be "too wise, too soon", and can't trust any adult, Bud has composed "Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself". Sprinkled randomly throughout the book (#3, #63, #29, #16 etc), they're a melange of timeless childhood advice, hilarious reasoning, and poignant realizations.

Bud's busting out of the padlocked shed his newest foster parents have locked him in, and he's off to find his unknown father. When she died, his mother left a half-dozen small stones inscribed with letters and numbers, and five different flyers for the jazz band Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky Devastators. Bud is convinced that Herman E. Calloway is his father.

This is a young adult book that will be enjoyed by adults and adolescents alike. Bright and polite Bud narrates his own story and, although he relates the precarious position of an orphan during the Great Depression, he never sounds like he feels sorry for himself. Life is full of unpleasant situations but with his self-authored book of "Rules and Things...", he can find a way to deal with anything. You'll be uplifted by his story.

I rate Bud, Not Buddy 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Bud, Not Buddy

I read Bud Not Buddy after reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham with my 6th grade class. I loved this story. It took the reader on a journey along with a young foster boy, Bud, in Michigan. He leaves the home where he has many friends and is sent to an abusive foster home. After he escapes the horrible back shed in which he is locked over night, and attacked by door guarding fish heads and vampire bats, he sets out to find his father. 
Along the way Bud makes many friends. The struggle of common people during the Depression is shown along with compassion people seem to naturally show towards children in tough situations.  
The defining part of this audiobook for me was the epilogue. Curtis explains that many of these characters were inspired by his own family members. He encourages us all to learn our family history from our elders while they are alive. It is so exciting...I can't wait to have my students read this.

Bud, not Buddy - 3M's Review

I listened to this Newbery winner by Christopher Paul Curtis with my son on the road trip to our new home. We both enjoyed it very much.

When we meet Bud Caldwell, he is living in an orphanage in Flint, Michigan. Soon, though, we find him "on the lam" and in search of his father whom he has never met. He always carries his few belongings in a suitcase, and in the suitcase are clues his dead mother left behind about his father. Set during the Great Depression, this book is excellent for its historical value for children. Recommended.

1999, 245 pp.

Newbery

Rating: 4

Bud, Not Buddy

When I read an interview with Christopher Paul Curtis in the free BookPage magazine that I always pick up at the library (promoting his new kids' book, Elijah of Buxton), it prompted me to finally pluck Bud, Not Buddy off the bookshelf. It seemed fitting to read about Michigan during the Great Depression over this past weekend, when the governor was going to shut down the state until a new budget fixing the $1.75 billion deficit was agreed upon, and when Michigan leads all other states in the US in unemployment.

I was fascinated to learn that Christopher Paul Curtis not only grew up in Flint, but spent over a decade working at a GM Assembly plant there (I think one of many that has been shut down in the past twenty years) before he began writing and became successful with The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963 (a Newbery Honor winner).

Bud, Not Buddy was a fun read - like Holes, it deals with injustice and racism, but Curtis has such a light touch that the story, the characters, and the humor in his writing just send the serious issues in the book creeping noiselessly into your brain. And as with Jerry Spinelli (in Maniac Magee), the writing and the description really blew me away. I honestly think it is on a par with the wonderful passages in the award-winning book that I just read for my adult book club - The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. And like Zafón, Curtis's description of books and libraries was beyond wonderful:

The next thing about the air in the library is that no other place smells anything like it. If you close your eyes and try to pick out what it is that you're sniffing you're only going to get confused, because all the smells have blended together and turned themselves into a different one.

As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you turned the pages. Then there was the smell of the cloth that covered the brand-new books, the books that made a splitting sound when you opened them. Then I could sniff the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes off the pages in little puffs when you're reading something or looking at some pictures, a kind of hypnotizing smell. (pp. 53-4)

Another passage that I loved describes Bud's first experience in a restaurant:

It was like someone took a old pot and poured about a hundred gallons of hot apple cider and a hundred gallons of hot coffee into it, then stirred eight or nine sweet potato pies, crusts and all, into that, then let six big steamy meat loafs float on top of all that, then threw in a couple of handfuls of smashed potatoes, then boiled the whole thing on high. This must be exactly how heaven smells! (p. 161-2)

This is exactly the kind of book that I want to share with kids (including both of mine) - it's got fantastic writing, suspense, clever but not condescending looks at the fears of childhood, and a wonderful coming of age story, coupled with historical and racial experiences that may as well be in Outer Mongolia for many American kids today. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Some web sites that were interesting while reading Bud, Not Buddy:

- Michigan Historical Museum Depression News
- Christopher Paul Curtis's website (check out his books for younger kids!)
- Photos from the 1930s and 1940s: Resources for Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust and Christopher Paul Curtis's Bud, Not Buddy