Christopher Paul Curtis
2 books analyzed
Biography
Christopher Paul Curtis was born in Flint, Michigan in 1953. Before becoming a writer, he worked on the assembly line at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 — the same Flint that serves as the starting point for Bud's journey. He wrote his first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, while alternating half-days on the line with half-days writing in the plant's break room. Bud, Not Buddy won the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award in 2000, becoming one of the few books to win both in the same year. Curtis has said that Bud's voice came to him almost complete from the beginning — that Bud knew things Curtis himself was still figuring out.
Christopher Paul Curtis at a glance
Works
Bud, Not Buddy
1999 · 245 pages · ★☆☆☆☆ Accessible
A ten-year-old orphan boy runs across Depression-era Michigan armed with a suitcase of flyers, a set of rules for survival, and the stubborn belief that a jazz bandleader is his father.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963
1995 · 210 pages · ★☆☆☆☆ Accessible
A family road trip turns into a collision with history — and one boy loses his innocence to a Sunday-morning bombing.
Diction Across Works
colloquial-comic
warm-comic-child-narrator