Bud, Not Buddy
1994
- noirs américains
- depressions
- littérature de jeunesse anglaise
- coretta scott king award
- history
- fiction
- runaways
- juvenile fiction
- romans, nouvelles, etc. pour la jeunesse
- crises économiques
The story
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 filled with his own important, secret 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 of 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 and find this mystery man, nothing can stop him--not hunger, not fear, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself.Bud, Not Buddy is full of laugh-out-loud humor and wonderful characters, hitting the high notes of jazz and sounding the deeper tones of the Great Depression. Once again Christopher Paul Curtis, author of the award-winning novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, takes readers on a heartwarming and unforgettable journey.From the Hardcover edition.
What it’s like
Warm, wry, and rooted in hard times, this is a novel that reads like a sunny afternoon on a porch with the Depression just past the screen door. Its voice is the main pleasure: a ten-year-old narrator who lists his rules, misspells his own grand ideas and turns hunger and loneliness into jokes, so the sentences move quickly, bouncing between funny asides and sudden quiet weight. The sensory world is Flint in 1936 seen from the road: soup kitchens and shuttered storefronts, a cardboard-lined boarding house, the brassy swing of jazz drifting from a hall or a radio, and open country under summer heat. The vibe is bittersweet and buoyant, a cozy adventure with real ache underneath, and it suits a slow weekend read, a read-aloud with a family, or a comfort book on a long train ride. Violence is absent and danger stays mostly offstage; fear appears in gentle, childlike form, and the one ghost story is played for comedy. Emotional arcs center on a lonely boy learning to trust a found family of misfits and a band leader who may not be what he hoped. It suits young readers and adults who want a gentle, hopeful story with humor and heart.
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