Bud, Not Buddy.

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis Delacorte, September 1999, $15.95, ISBN 0-385-32306-9, Ages 9-12

Author Christopher Paul Curtis has an utterly engaging imagination peopled with plucky, unforgettable characters like Bud ("not Buddy, sir") Caldwell, a 10-year-old orphan on the lam from an abusive foster home, who sets off in search of the big bandleader pictured in a flier his dead mother left him. Bud is convinced this man must be his father; once, before his mother died, Bud caught her crying over his picture.

Bud, Not Buddy is Curtis' second novel. His first, the critically acclaimed The Watsons Go the Birmingham (1963), won a Coretta Scott King Award and was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1996. Curtis' sophomore effort captured the grand prize becoming the first book by an African American author since 1977 to win the prestigious Newbery Medal for the Most Distinguished Contribution to American Literature for Children.

Completely entering the mind of his resilient, preadolescent protagonist, Curtis tells the story of his search for a place to belong in language that is authentic, funny and unselfconsciously ironic. Bud is a pint-sized philosopher with a rule to help him make sense of every curveball life might pitch his way. He's figured out, for example, that "If an adult tells you not to worry, and you weren't worried before, you better hurry up and start 'cause you're already running late."

Bud may be a committed realist, but he knows enough to hedge his bets--just in case blood-sucking vampires do exist. Curtis, too, for all the magic he weaves from Bud's rich imagination, does not sidestep the harsh realities of prejudice, homelessness and hunger that pervaded 1930s Michigan. Out in the world, Bud encounters lurking dangers and potential violence, but he also finds kindness from strangers--in a soup kitchen line, along a dark highway just outside a racist town, among rowdy band members who teach him to play the sax. Through it all, Bud hangs on to his battered suitcase full of treasures and refuses to feel sorry for himself, never allowing himself to give in to pessimism. Curtis spins a yarn that is ultimately hopeful, even heroic. At its heartwarming end, Bud confronts one final surprise, and manages to fashion for himself a family, a future and an enduring place in our hearts.

Rosemarie Robotham is an author and an editor with Essence. She lives with her husband and their two children in New York City.