Bud, Not Buddy

Bud, Not Buddy is a novel for young readers by the American writer Christopher Paul Curtis. It is set in Michigan, the state where the author grew up, in the middle of the Great Depression.

Bud Caldwell is the boy at the centre of it. He is ten, he has no mother, and he has spent time in places where children without families are sent. What he has of his own is a suitcase, a set of rules he has written for himself, and a clue about the man he thinks may be his father.

The novel follows his journey from Flint to Grand Rapids. On the way he meets a homeless family and a labour organiser, and he comes up against what life was like for an orphaned black boy in that time and place.

The book was the first to win both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award, and it also received the William Allen White Children's Book Award. It followed the author's first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham.