Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis - Historical Fiction

For all of those in my class who took a quick intake of breath when I said that I just wasn’t “wowed” by Bud, Not Buddy, I did finish the book and I did find enjoyment out of it. To be honest, I felt like the book was slow starting. I was dragging through reading it, because I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the book was never ending and Bud was never going to get to where he was trying to go. I was a bit confused throughout the book as well. I kept thinking that Bud’s mother had committed suicide due to being unhappy about seeing Herman E. Calloway on those band flyers. I also kept wondering how Bud became so intelligent (such a good reader) if his mother was the one who read to him and he was only six-years-old when she died. That is still a question that I have yet to answer in my mind of “I Wonder” questions, but that’s ok, because Bud, Not Buddy turned out to be a masterpiece in the end.

I really didn’t get interested in this book until Bud met Lefty Lewis. I guess I was just disenfranchised with the fact that so many people were being so terrible to Bud. My interest beginning around the time that Bud met Lefty Lewis parallels with the fact that Bud’s life really didn’t get “started” until Lefty found him all alone on that dark road, trying courageously to reach Grand Falls. It seemed that Bud had a life he recalled with semi-happiness with his mother, then life stopped for him after his mother died, and then life began again when Left Lewis picked him up and cared for him. I think that Bud was just as much confused about his own life as I was about his life. Therefore, when Bud began discovering things about his own life, I also began discovering things. Christopher Paul Curtis has obviously employed this style or craft in writing in order to draw the reader into the events of the story and to bond with the characters. I was certainly feeling very protective of Bud by the end of the book and wanted to call the authorities on the Amos’. How dare they lock a child in a dark shed that was home to hornets and fish heads with teeth! Todd Amos reminded me of Dudley in Harry Potter, torturing innocent children with bullying tactics and getting spoiled rotten by his parents (his mother in particular). I have unfortunately met some children like this and I just sit back and think, “Their mothers are taking up for them now, but what are they going to do with them when they turn that bullying on their mothers?”

Bud was a genius for his age. He could analyze situations and people better than I ever could at that time in my life and come up with intelligent sayings to base his life upon. How in the world he remembered all the rules in his “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself” is beyond my understanding. Sometimes those rules made me laugh and other times I wanted to say, “Don’t do that!”. Still, I never really caught Bud out-right lying, just holding back the truth in some situations. This is a skill that adults use often, and Bud had mastered it before he graduated from middle school. Only Bud could put into words so “elegantly” the saying, “There comes a time when you’re losing a fight that it just doesn’t make sense to keep on fighting”. There is pure wisdom in that statement. If only I had realized that when I was a teenager and quit fighting against everyone and anyone who I felt was trying to “control me” and “take my freedom away”.

I found it very fitting that Herman E. Calloway was Bud’s grandfather. Curtis was acting the part of Charlotte in “Charlotte’s Web” and weaving a web of interesting evidence for the reader and Bud alike. Just like Charlotte’s webs and words of praise for a pig named Wilbur, Curtis’ web allowed just the right evidence and pieces of the story to come at the right time. I could see how Herman was very strong willed (much like Bud could be, I’m sure) and held onto material things about his daughter (just like Bud did with his suitcase and things that reminded him of his mother). I can understand why Herman was hard on Bud’s mother and wanted her to go to college. He was a proud, self-made man and wanted the best for his family. I know now why drummers didn’t stay to long at Grand Calloway Station. If Bud’s mother ran off with a drummer (Bud’s father), I’m sure that that left a bitter taste in Herman’s mouth for that specific type of musician. It really is a very sad story, with Bud’s mother being unhappy because she missed her father and Herman being unhappy because he missed his daughter. This sadness and despair was a prevalent feeling during the time of the Great Depression. It really was one of America’s saddest times. Families were torn apart (some never mended and met up again), children were hungry and starving to death, places like Hooverville sprang up all over, and still, people could not except the grand basic principal written long ago in our Constitution that all are created equal and that segregation was insane (so the last part about segregation wasn’t written, but it really should have been inferred long ago)!

Bud, Not Buddy is an exceptional work of Historical Fiction that weaves many interesting themes, characters, and historical events into the text. I would like to believe that our country has come far from the depression and hatred that was witnessed in American personalities at that time, but have we? That is a question that all of us should ponder and judge, at least in our own lives.