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Bud, Not Buddy
Cover of Bud, Not Buddy
Bud, Not Buddy
(Newbery Medal Winner)
Hit the road with Bud in this Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award-winning classic about a boy on a journey to find his father—from Christopher Paul Curtis, recipient of the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.
 
It’s 1936, in Flint Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud’s got a few things going for him:
1. He has his own suitcase full of special things.
2. He’s the author of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.
3. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: flyers advertising Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!
 
Bud’s got an idea that those flyers will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road to find this mystery man, nothing can stop him—not hunger, not fear, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself.
“[A] powerfully felt novel.” —The New York Times
Hit the road with Bud in this Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award-winning classic about a boy on a journey to find his father—from Christopher Paul Curtis, recipient of the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.
 
It’s 1936, in Flint Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud’s got a few things going for him:
1. He has his own suitcase full of special things.
2. He’s the author of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.
3. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: flyers advertising Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!
 
Bud’s got an idea that those flyers will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road to find this mystery man, nothing can stop him—not hunger, not fear, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself.
“[A] powerfully felt novel.” —The New York Times
Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Subjects-
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    0
  • Library copies:
    0
Levels-
  • ATOS:
    5.0
  • Lexile:
    950
  • Interest Level:
    MG
  • Text Difficulty:
    3 - 6


 
Awards-
Excerpts-
  • From the book HERE WE GO AGAIN.  
    We were all standing in line waiting for breakfast when one of the caseworkers cam in an tap-tap-taped down the line.  Uh-oh, this meant bad news, either they'd found a foster home for somebody or somebody was about to be paddled.  All the kids watched the woman as she moved along the line, her high-heeled shoes sounding like little firecrackers going off on the wooden floor.

    Shoot! She stopped at me and said, "Are you Buddy Caldwell?"

    I said, "It's Bud, not Buddy, ma'am."

    She put her hand on my shoulder and took me out of line.  Then she pulled Jerry, on of the littler boys, over.  "Aren't you Jerry Clark?"  He nodded.

    "Boys, good news!  Now that the school year has ended, you both have been accepted in new temporary-care homes starting this afternoon!"

                
    Jerry asked me the same thing I was thinking. "Together?"

    She said, "why, no.  Jerry, you'll be in a family with three little girls—"

    Jerry looked like he'd just found out that they were going to dip him in a pot of boiling milk.

    "— and Bud—"  She looked at some papers she was holding.  "Oh, yes, the Amoses, you'll be with Mr. And Mrs. Amos and their son, who's twelve years old, that makes him just two years older than you, doesn't it, Bud?"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    She said, "I'm sure you'll both be very happy."

    Me and Jerry looked at each other.

    The woman said "Now, now, boys, no need to look so glum.  I know you don't know what it means, but there is a depression going on all over this country.  People can't find jobs and these are very, very difficult times for everybody.  We've been lucky enough to find two wonderful families to open their doors for you.  I think it's best that we show our new foster families that we're very—"

    She dragged out the word very, waiting for us to finish the sentence.

    Jerry said, "Cheerful, helpful and grateful."  I moved my lips and mumbled.


    She smiled and said, "Unfortunately you won't have time for breakfast.  I'll have a couple of pieces of fruit put in a bag.  In the meantime got to the sleep room and strip your beds and gather all of your things."

    Here we go again.  I felt that I as walking in my sleep as I followed Jerry back to the room where all of the boys' beds were jim-jammed together.  This was the third foster home I was going to and I'm used to packing up and leaving, but it still surprises me that there are always a few seconds, right after they tell you you've got to go, when my nose gets all runny and my throat all choky and eyes get all sting-y.  But the tears coming out doesn't happen to me anymore.  I don't know when it first happened, but it seems like my eyes don't cry no more.

    Jerry sat on his bed and I could tell that he was losing the fight not to cry.  Tears were popping out of his eyes and slipping down his cheeks.

    I sat down next to him and said, "I know being in a house with three girls sounds terrible, Jerry, but it's a lot better than being with a boy who's a couple of years older than you.  I'm the one who's going to have problems.  A older boy is going to want to fight, but those little girls are going to treat you real good.  They're going to...
About the Author-
  • Christopher Paul Curtis is the author of The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, one of the most highly acclaimed first novels for young readers in recent years. It was singled out for many awards, among them a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor, and has been a bestseller in hardcover and paperback.
    Christopher Paul Curtis grew up in Flint, Michigan. After high school he began working on the assembly line at the Fisher Body Flint Plant No. 1 while attending the Flint branch of the University of Michigan. Today he is a full-time writer.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    January 7, 2002
    A 10-year-old boy in Depression-era Michigan sets out to find the man he believes to be his father. "While the harshness of Bud's circumstances are authentically depicted, Curtis imbues them with an aura of hope, and he makes readers laugh even when he sets up the most daunting scenarios," said PW
    in our Best Books citation. Ages 9-12.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    September 6, 1999
    As in his Newbery Honor-winning debut, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, Curtis draws on a remarkable and disarming mix of comedy and pathos, this time to describe the travails and adventures of a 10-year-old African-American orphan in Depression-era Michigan. Bud is fed up with the cruel treatment he has received at various foster homes, and after being locked up for the night in a shed with a swarm of angry hornets, he decides to run away. His goal: to reach the man he--on the flimsiest of evidence--believes to be his father, jazz musician Herman E. Calloway. Relying on his own ingenuity and good luck, Bud makes it to Grand Rapids, where his "father" owns a club. Calloway, who is much older and grouchier than Bud imagined, is none too thrilled to meet a boy claiming to be his long-lost son. It is the other members of his band--Steady Eddie, Mr. Jimmy, Doug the Thug, Doo-Doo Bug Cross, Dirty Deed Breed and motherly Miss Thomas--who make Bud feel like he has finally arrived home. While the grim conditions of the times and the harshness of Bud's circumstances are authentically depicted, Curtis shines on them an aura of hope and optimism. And even when he sets up a daunting scenario, he makes readers laugh--for example, mopping floors for the rejecting Calloway, Bud pretends the mop is "that underwater boat in the book Momma read to me, Twenty Thousand Leaks Under the Sea." Bud's journey, punctuated by Dickensian twists in plot and enlivened by a host of memorable personalities, will keep readers engrossed from first page to last. Ages 9-12.

  • Library Journal

    December 1, 1999
    Gr 4-7-Motherless Bud shares his amusingly astute rules of life as he hits the road to find the jazz musician he believes is his father. A medley of characters brings Depression-era Michigan to life. (Sept.)

    Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • School Library Journal

    Starred review from September 1, 1999
    Gr 4-7-When 10-year-old Bud Caldwell runs away from his new foster home, he realizes he has nowhere to go but to search for the father he has never known: a legendary jazz musician advertised on some old posters his deceased mother had kept. A friendly stranger picks him up on the road in the middle of the night and deposits him in Grand Rapids, MI, with Herman E. Calloway and his jazz band, but the man Bud was convinced was his father turns out to be old, cold, and cantankerous. Luckily, the band members are more welcoming; they take him in, put him to work, and begin to teach him to play an instrument. In a Victorian ending, Bud uses the rocks he has treasured from his childhood to prove his surprising relationship with Mr. Calloway. The lively humor contrasts with the grim details of the Depression-era setting and the particular difficulties faced by African Americans at that time. Bud is a plucky, engaging protagonist. Other characters are exaggerations: the good ones (the librarian and Pullman car porter who help him on his journey and the band members who embrace him) are totally open and supportive, while the villainous foster family finds particularly imaginative ways to torture their charge. However, readers will be so caught up in the adventure that they won't mind. Curtis has given a fresh, new look to a traditional orphan-finds-a-home story that would be a crackerjack read-aloud.-Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC

    Copyright 1999 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Booklist

    September 1, 1999
    Gr. 4^-6. Bud, 10, is on the run from the orphanage and from yet another mean foster family. His mother died when he was 6, and he wants to find his father. Set in Michigan during the Great Depression, this is an Oliver Twist kind of foundling story, but it's told with affectionate comedy, like the first part of Curtis' "The Watsons Go to Birmingham" (1995). On his journey, Bud finds danger and violence (most of it treated as farce), but more often, he finds kindness--in the food line, in the library, in the Hooverville squatter camp, on the road--until he discovers who he is and where he belongs. Told in the boy's naive, desperate voice, with lots of examples of his survival tactics ("Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar out of Yourself"), this will make a great read-aloud. Curtis says in an afterword that some of the characters are based on real people, including his own grandfathers, so it's not surprising that the rich blend of tall tale, slapstick, sorrow, and sweetness has the wry, teasing warmth of family folklore. ((Reviewed September 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)

  • The Horn Book

    January 1, 2000
    It's the Depression, and Bud is ten and has been in and out of the Flint, Michigan, children's home and foster homes since his mother died. After a particularly terrible, though riotously recounted, evening with his latest foster family, Bud decides to take off and find the man he believes is his father, bandleader Herman E. Calloway. Bud's fresh voice keeps the sentimentality to a minimum, and the story zips along in step with Bud's own panache.

    (Copyright 2000 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

  • The Christian Science Monitor "The book is a gem, of value to all ages, not just the young people to whom it is aimed."
  • School Library Journal, starred review "Curtis has given a fresh, new look to a traditional orphan-finds-a-home story that would be a crackerjack read-aloud."
  • The Bulletin, Recommended "The resourceful Bud is a hero readers will immediately take to heart."
  • Booklist "Has the wry, teasing warmth of family folklore."
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    Random House Children's Books
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Bud, Not Buddy
Bud, Not Buddy
(Newbery Medal Winner)
Christopher Paul Curtis
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