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
On sale: September 7, 1999
Age: 10 and up
Grade: Grade 5 & Up
Page count: 288 Pages
ISBN: 9780385323062
Reading level: Lexile: 950L | Fountas/Pinnell: U
CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS is the recipient of the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. He won the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award for his bestselling second novel,
Bud, Not Buddy. His first novel,
The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, was also singled out for many awards, among them a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor, and has been made into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie.
Curtis grew up in Flint, Michigan. After high school he began working on the assembly line at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 while attending the Flint branch of the University of Michigan. He is now a full-time writer. He lives with his family in Windsor, Ontario.
AN ALA BEST BOOK FOR YOUNG ADULTS
AN ALA NOTABLE CHILDREN'S BOOK
AN IRA CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD WINNER
NAMED TO 14 STATE AWARD LISTS “The book is a gem, of value to all ages, not just the young people to whom it is aimed.” —
The Christian Science Monitor “Will keep readers engrossed from first page to last.” —
Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Curtis writes with a razor-sharp intelligence that grabs the reader by the heart and never lets go. . . . This highly recommended title [is] at the top of the list of books to be read again and again.” —
Voice of Youth Advocates, starred review
