This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 1999 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Cover art copyright © 1999 by Ernie Norcia

Introduction copyright © 2019 by Kwame Alexander

Foreword copyright © 2019 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Excerpt from The Mighty Miss Malone copyright © 2012 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Excerpt from The Watsons Go To Birmingham copyright © 1995 by Christopher Paul Curtis

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Lyrics from “Mommy Says No” copyright © 1999 by Cydney McKenzie Curtis.

Used by permission of the author.

Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Curtis, Christopher Paul.

Bud, not Buddy/Christopher Paul Curtis.

p. cm.

Summary: Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father—the renowned bandleader, H. E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

ISBN 978-0-385-32306-2 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-440-41328-8 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 978-0-553-49410-5 (mass pbk.) | ISBN 978-0-385-72995-6 (ebook)

[1. Runaways—Fiction. 2. Afro-Americans—Fiction. 3. Depressions—1929—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.C94137 Bu 2005

[Fic]—dc21

LCCN 2006540189

Ebook ISBN 9780385729956

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

a_prh_5.4_c0_r1 /N/8/irxWJJT8ioTDPal2o4X1jBL9jOrLDTJFnRbS6urh+kbkl41pm0C1d5cpHfm