BUD, NOT BUDDY by Christopher Paul Curtis (1999)

Yearling/Random House; 243 pages; comedy/drama; ages 8-12; ISBN: 978-0-440-41328-8.

Is jazzman Herman E. Calloway of Herman E. Calloway & the Dusky Devastators of the Depression the father of ten-year-old protagonist Bud (please don't call him Buddy) Caldwell? He seems to think so after seeing his mother get agitated by a flyer for one of Calloway's shows right before she passed away and made him an orphan. It's not much to go on, of course, but it sure beats sticking around in abusive foster homes and miserable shantytowns in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression. On his 120-mile journey to Grand Rapids, home of Mr. Calloway, Bud encounters a "vampire" with a clearly marked box of human blood in his car, kisses a girl named Deza Malone, and ultimately discovers the real identity of Herman E. Calloway.

Reminiscent of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens in his storytelling approach, Christopher Paul Curtis also has a wicked sense of humor like the former. "The door banged open and Herman E. Calloway stood there huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, only with his belly it looked like he'd already eaten the three little pigs," Curtis writes. Plus, Bud's self-help manual, entitled "Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself," includes some real doozies, like #29: "When You Wake Up and Don't Know for Sure Where You're At and There's a Bunch of People Standing Around You, It's Best to Pretend You're Still Asleep Until You Can Figure Out What's Going On and What You Should Do."

Winner of both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. For further reading, check out a contemporary tale from Curtis, 2004's Bucking the Sarge.