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For Christmas, we gave books. To all of our relatives. There was one nephew who was always into something. Sometimes a cutup. Often a bit wild and precocious. Full of curiosity and humor. And he didn’t like books, according to him. I thought at first maybe we should just give him some money or a video game, but my wife insisted that the tradition continue. There was only one book I thought would stand a chance at getting him to actually open it.
I’d listened to Christopher Paul Curtis talk about Bud, Not Buddy on C-SPAN. He was funny and smart and engaging, and when he read the hilarious excerpt about Bud getting popped upside the head by his pretend parents while waiting to eat breakfast at the mission, I was hooked. Here was an African American man telling a coming-of-age story about a fearless, precocious, and funny African American boy. In many ways, the adventures and travails of Bud Caldwell are a metaphor for black people in America: since we arrived on these shores, our journey has been met with harsh conditions and challenging circumstances, but we’ve waded in the water, crossed over Jordan, and survived, and with the help and support of family and extended family, we’ve orchestrated lives full of faith and optimism. This book spoke to me, engaged and empowered me in a profound way. And I couldn’t put it down. And I told everyone about it.
When it won the Newbery Medal, Bud, Not Buddy joined Virginia Hamilton’s M.C. Higgins, the Great and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry as the only books by African Americans in the seventy-eight-year history of the award to win the coveted medal for the Most Distinguished Contribution to American Literature for Children. This meant that more readers would get to meet the good but naïve kid with the suitcase full of special things. That more kids would get to meet the curious and precocious kid with the rules for “Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.”
“I’ve got the perfect book for our nephew,” I told my wife a week before we headed south for the holidays. “We’ll give him Bud, Not Buddy. ” And we did, and he saw the kid on the front who looked like him, and he opened it. And he read, and he laughed. The next year, at Christmas, I remember my nephew asking what book we were gonna give him. That made me smile. So did this book. And it will continue to do the same for many a child. And what’s more funner than that?
Kwame Alexander
P.S. Fifteen years after I first saw Christopher Paul Curtis on TV, I would walk up to him after a speech he gave in South Carolina and give him a copy of my novel, The Crossover. I remember him thanking me, saying he was gonna read it. And he did. And later, in Washington, DC, at another conference, he would come up to me and tell me that he enjoyed it. A few months later, it would win the Newbery Medal. Ain’t life grand, I imagine Bud Caldwell might say. And, yes, indeed it is.