Bud Not Buddy

Bud, Not Buddy Book Review
Written by Christopher Paul Curtis
Reviewed by Isabella Martin

The book I read, Bud, Not Buddy, written by Christopher Paul Curtis, was surprisingly great. It was very sad and emotional, but hilarious at the same time. The book is set in the time of the Depression (around the 1930s) in the United States. Most people during the Depression were unemployed, and the people who were employed did not have much. Most people who were employed were white. The main character, Bud, is a poor African-American orphaned boy who recently lost his mother. He is forced to live in a horrible orphanage, then sent to a foster home, which proves to be even worse.
Poor Bud lives in the town of Flint, in Michigan. He has never met his dad, so he is determined to use the only clue he has--a flyer advertising a jazz band performance--to find his father. He takes a journey to another city to find him, and faces many obstacles and hardships along the way.
My favorite part of this book is the way the author (Christopher Paul Curtis) writes about the Depression. He makes me feel like I am living in Flint, Michigan during the 1930’s. He really brings this story alive, and illustrates what happened during the Depression. The Depression forced the people in America to change their lifestyles in a big way, and Curtis paints a good picture of this change. He describes the poverty that people lived in in detail. He also describes specific aspects of people’s daily lives, like the freight train-hopping (which people did to get to different places for free), and the long lines in the city that families waited in to get free (spoiled) food, because they could not afford to buy food.
Throughout the book, Buddy faces many obstacles, such as being taken in as a foster child by the Amos family, an evil family that blames him for everything. He eventually escapes the Amos family and begins the adventure of finding his father.
The main thing I didn’t like about the book is that I was confused by certain parts. I was confused about how Buddy knew that the flyer he found at his mother’s house was a clue to finding his father. Also, at the beginning of the book, it seemed boring and slow, but eventually it got better and more interesting. Once I got into the book, it was hard to put this book down. I give this book a four-star review, because it was very descriptive and interesting.