50 Fun Facts About Bud, Not Buddy

Which children's book prize did Bud, Not Buddy win, a first for an African American man?

The Newbery Medal came more than twenty years after an African American author first received it. Bud's story also collected fourteen different state awards.

Herman E. Calloway, the bandleader Bud is sure is his father, turns out to be which relative?

His grandfather is the truth that comes out when Bud shouts his mother's name. Bud is privately relieved that the grumpy old man with the big belly is not his father after all.

What does Bud Caldwell smash with a rake in a dark shed, believing it is a bat about to attack?

A hornets' nest splits open and the swarm stings Bud until he breaks out through the shed window. Furious, he decides to get even with his foster family before he runs away.

Bud's Momma called a bud 'a little fist of' what, 'waiting to unfold and be seen by the world'?

Love is the word Momma chose: a bud, she said, is a flower-to-be, 'a little fist of love waiting to unfold'. Buddy, she added, was a name for a dog.

The shantytown outside Flint where Bud is fed supper is of a kind named to mock which president?

Herbert Hoover was president when the Depression began and was widely blamed for it, so homeless camps everywhere became Hoovervilles. Bud and Bugs first mishear the name as 'Hooperville'.

A box marked 'URGENT: CONTAINS HUMAN BLOOD' convinces Bud that the driver offering a lift is what?

A vampire is Bud's first guess, so he locks himself in and tries to drive the car away. The blood was really being rushed to a hospital in Flint.

What does Herman E. Calloway pick up in every town his band plays, a habit begun for his daughter?

A rock from each stop, marked with the place and date, was his gift to a little girl who once asked for one. He still keeps a pile of them in the glovebox of his car.

Which saying did Bud's Momma teach him, one he recalls whenever his luck suddenly changes?

One door closes, another opens was Momma's promise for the darkest nights. Bud decides that losing the librarian he trusted, who has moved away, is one of those doors shutting.

Which stage name do Herman E. Calloway's musicians give Bud in a mock knighting ceremony?

Sleepy LaBone joins his habit of sleeping past noon to the skinny frame that made one bandmate suggest 'the Bone'. Bud calls it the best name he has ever heard.

Bud's best friend at the Home, Bugs, earned his nickname after what crawled into his ear?

A cockroach got stuck so deep that four adults held Bugs down and tried to pull it out with tweezers. Bud says he never heard a kid scream that loud.

Which Flint-born writer, who spent years on a car assembly line, is the author of Bud, Not Buddy?

Christopher Paul Curtis read and wrote during his half-hour breaks in a Flint factory, where he worked for thirteen years. Bud's story was only his second novel.

Bud sets out to walk 120 miles from Flint to which Michigan city, home of Herman E. Calloway's band?

Grand Rapids would take 24 hours of walking by Bud's own sums, so he decides to travel mostly at night. He gets only three small towns along before a passing car stops for him.

Which 12-year-old bully, his foster parents' son, wakes Bud by jamming a pencil up his nose?

Todd Amos then puts on a wounded act and blames the fight on Bud, and his mother believes every word. Bud is almost impressed by the performance.

Before fleeing his foster home, Bud pours what on the sleeping bully to make him wet the bed?

Warm water works once he dribbles it on the boy's pyjama trousers, after dipping the sleeper's fingers in the glass does nothing. The family's mother hated bed-wetters above all else.

Which weapon does Bud hide on the back porch of his foster home so nobody can use it on him?

A shotgun leaning by the icebox is the first thing Bud deals with, fearing the family would fire it and call it an accident. He aims it at the stove and pretends to hunt a tiger before putting it outside.

Where does Bud sleep on his first night on the run, after finding the Flint library closed?

Under a Christmas tree is where he hides, one of a row of giant evergreens planted beside the library with branches low enough to conceal him. He rolls up in his blanket there.

At the mission breakfast line, a stranger saves Bud a place by pretending he is a son called what?

Clarence is the name the man in overalls shouts, and his wife and two children play along so that Bud can eat. Bud thinks of them as his pretend family.

What treat does Bud's pretend mother sprinkle on his oatmeal at the Flint mission?

Brown sugar came out of a packet she had brought for her own children, yet she shared it with a stranger's boy. When one of her kids sticks his tongue out at Bud, he does not blame him.

Miss Hill, the Flint librarian Bud hopes will help him, has married and moved to which city?

Chicago is 54 hours away on foot, as another librarian works out with Bud from an atlas. He leaves disappointed, no longer sure who he can turn to.

A Flint librarian remembers that Bud always asked for books about which conflict, and saves him one?

The Civil War appeals to Bud less as history than for what he calls the best gory pictures in the world. He loses a whole afternoon in the book she finds him.

The stew ladled out to Bud and Bugs at the shantytown outside Flint is named after which animal?

Muskrat gives the stew its name, though Bud also finds dandelion greens, potatoes, wild carrots and crawdads in it. Both boys go back for seconds.

Which chore is Bud sharing with a girl named Deza at the creek when she leans in to kiss him?

Washing dishes at the creek is the price of supper in the camp. Deza went on to be the heroine of her own novel, The Mighty Miss Malone.

Which sad folk song is a harmonica player performing as Bud Caldwell receives his first kiss?

Shenandoah drifts over from the camp's mouth organ, and Deza recites the words for Bud and calls the moment romantic. Bud just hears a sad song he does not much like.

Bugs invites Bud to ride the rails out West, hoping to earn money doing which kind of work?

Picking fruit was the plan the two boys sealed by spitting in their palms and shaking on being brothers. Only Bugs makes it onto the moving freight train.

Which driver spots Bud walking near Owosso at 2:30 in the morning and takes him the rest of the way?

Lefty Lewis is modelled on a real Negro league pitcher from the author's own family. In the story he teases Bud about his peanut head and feeds him at his daughter's house.

Hiding in roadside bushes, Bud gives himself away by shouting that he dislikes what on a sandwich?

Mustard was no obstacle, the driver replied, since it was not glued on and could be scraped off. Bud eats the baloney sandwich as it is and calls it the best of his life.

The man driving Bud across Michigan secretly carries flyers for a union of which railroad workers?

Pullman porters in his home city could find no local printer willing to produce the meeting notices, so he fetched them from Flint. He has Bud hide the box under the seat when a policeman pulls them over.

Which kind of strike does Bud's driver across Michigan call the trouble in Flint's factories?

Sit-down strikers stay at their posts so the bosses cannot bring in others to take their jobs, Bud learns. The driver adds that factory owners seem scared of workers with any dignity or pride.

What is the name of Herman E. Calloway's club, where Bud first finds the band sitting in a circle?

The Log Cabin looks the part, with walls and entrance like giant chopped-down trees. Bud steps inside, waits in the dark between two sets of doors and comes back out pretending he has already spoken to his father.

At which restaurant does Bud eat the best meal of his life and finally burst into tears?

The Sweet Pea is really someone's living room filled with card tables, yet Bud thinks it the best restaurant in the world. He cries because he feels he has finally found where he belongs.

Which singer in Herman E. Calloway's band, fingers full of rings, becomes a mother figure to Bud?

Miss Thomas is billed as the band's vocal stylist, and she is the one who insists to Herman that the boy is honest. Bud ends his first evening with the band crying in her lap.

Which toothpick-chewing musician, Bud's favourite in the band, hands him his first recorder?

Steady Eddie also swaps Bud's tattered suitcase for a proper instrument case, and asks if he may borrow the boy's line about eyes that no longer cry.

Why does Herman E. Calloway's band always include one white musician, such as Dirty Deed?

The club is in his name because the law stopped Black people owning property in that area. He also sets up bookings with white customers who would not knowingly hire a Black band.

Which instrument do the band members pool their money to buy for Bud at the end of Bud, Not Buddy?

A saxophone, small, old and dented, has been repadded and resprung for him, and he is handed a tin of polish to shine it himself. Bud vows to match the others within three weeks, and they roar with laughter.

Bud's treasured flyer bills Herman E. Calloway's band as 'Masters of the New' what?

Jazz was only one of the band's styles, since other flyers sell the same players as Masters of the Delta Blues. Their leader changes the group's name so often that fans cannot keep up.

Which band 'of the Depression' does Bud's blue flyer advertise alongside Herman E. Calloway's name?

The Dusky Devastators took their name from a real 1930s band led by a relative of the author. On the flyer it is followed by six exclamation marks, which Bud reads as proof of greatness.

Bud compares his growing belief that Herman E. Calloway is his father to a seed becoming which tree?

A maple, 'mighty' by the time he leaves Flint, sprouted from a boast he blurted out to a bully at the Home. It starts shaking in the wind when he sees how old the man really is.

Which gangster-movie phrase does Bud use for himself after escaping his foster home?

On the lam is how Bud sees himself, 'just like Public Enemy Number One'. He admits the thrill lasts about five minutes before fear takes over.

Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things promise a funner life and to make what out of yourself?

A better liar is the tongue-in-cheek goal, but the list is really a survival code for a boy with no adult to protect him. Rule 3 advises keeping any fib simple and easy to remember.

Under Bud Caldwell's Rule 83, what should you do when an adult tells you there is nothing to fear?

Start worrying at once is Bud's advice, because by then you are already running late. A later rule warns that an adult who asks for help with a problem usually just wants something fetched.

Which first names of Bud's Momma, shouted in anger, make Herman E. Calloway drop his pipe?

Angela Janet is a name the old bandleader has not heard spoken in years, and it stops him cold. He stumbles indoors without a word and shuts himself away.

What did Herman E. Calloway want his daughter to become, pushing her so hard that she left home?

A teacher was his dream rather than hers, and their battles ended with her leaving for good. For years he kept hoping to spot her face in the crowd at one of his shows.

In the only photograph Bud owns of his Momma as a girl, she sits frowning on which animal?

A horse, tiny and saggy-backed, was led around her neighbourhood by a travelling photographer. She scowls because her father insisted she wear a filthy, outsized cowboy hat for the picture.

Which four-word phrase opens Bud, Not Buddy and returns, addressed to Momma, in its closing lines?

Here we go again is first a groan, as a caseworker arrives to move Bud to yet another foster home. By the last page he says it with a smile and adds that this time he cannot wait.

Which rhyming nonsense phrase does Bud use whenever something happens in a flash in Bud, Not Buddy?

Woop, zoop, sloop turns up when a prank works, when tears start and when Bud drops off to sleep. It sits beside 'shucks' and 'doggone' among the words he leans on most.

Which honour for outstanding African American authors went to Bud, Not Buddy and its writer?

The Coretta Scott King Award had never before gone to a book that also took American children's publishing's top medal. Its author won it a second time in 2008, for Elijah of Buxton.

For which carmaker did the author of Bud, Not Buddy work in Flint for thirteen years?

General Motors had him lifting car doors of up to eighty pounds onto Buicks for ten hours a day. He hated the work so much that he had nightmares about it.

Which earlier novel by the author of Bud, Not Buddy, his debut, became a television film in 2013?

The Watsons Go to Birmingham began as a story about a family trip to Florida, until a poem his son brought home changed the destination. Its full title ends with the year 1963.

Which trumpeter and film composer scored the Kennedy Center's 2017 stage version of Bud, Not Buddy?

Terence Blanchard wrote a score meant to be challenging yet playable by high school bands in later productions. Actors and musicians shared one stage, with no orchestra pit between them.

Which famous security agency pays the guards who block the freight train Bud tries to board?

Pinkerton does not pay enough for this, one guard decides, throwing down his hat and club as the crowd of men surges forward. Four of his colleagues then do the same.