Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 September 2000 — Page 23

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2000

THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

PAQEC3

Children’s author igoes from autoworker ito award-winner

; By ALEXANDRA R. MOSES | Associated Press Writer > WINDSOR, Ontario (AP)— before the national book awards and the speaking tours, former autoworker Christopher Paul Curtis typed his name into the Windsor Public Library computer, wondering what it would be like to see his name pop up with a list of books beneath it. The only book that came up when he typed Christopher Curtis was one called “How to be Your Own Chimney Sweep.” So he decided if he ever got published, he should use his middle name — to avoid confusion. Good thing too, since his second work, “Bud, Not Buddy,” won two prestigious children’s book awards this year, the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. He’s the first black author to win both in the same year for the same book, said Random House publicist Melanie Chang. Curtis has come a long way since he worked the line at Fisher JJody 1 in Flint, Mich., where he ^rew up. He spent 13 years hanging doors. He hated it. : “Overall it was a bleak experience,” Curtis said. He parted writing during his breaks, £task that served as therapy and •jjway to pass the time. What he Jvrote back then was mostly ^•ants, he said. ‘ When he left Fisher Body, • Curtis attended the University of • Michigan-Flint and took a series ipf odd jobs, including work in a /warehouse and as a maintenance yaan, before his wife of more yhan 20 years told him she would support him if he took a year off to write. That was six years ago. To wife Kay, it was a nobrainer her husband had a gift, one she saw during their longdistance courtship when she lived in Hamilton, Ontario and he lived in Flint. “He wrote a lot of letters, I probably got a letter from him every day. The way he had the ability to describe things and make it seem real,” Kay Curtis

said.

Curtis, 47, had been writing for years, but not fiction and not with an eye toward making it a career. When he was finally ready to do it for real, the publishing offer came in 1995 after he submitted his first book to a couple of contests that he didn’t

win.

But the result: “The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963,” was named a Newbery Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book in 1996. “Bud, Not Buddy” was the first place winner of both awards this year. Bud is the tale of a street-wise 10-year-old Flint boy who decides to walk to Grand Rapids to find his father, whom he’s never met but is sure is musician Herman E. Calloway, whose band is advertised in some flyers Bud’s mother kept. She has died and Bud’s been living in an orphanage for four years. In the beginning of the story, Bud goes to a foster home, where he’s forced to sleep in a shed with what he believes is a vampire bat. “Shucks, I couldn’t remember for sure if you killed a vampire by driving a stake in its heart or by shooting it with a silver bullet! If I was wrong and didn’t kill the bat right away I was going to be trapped in the shed with a vampire who was probably going to be really upset,” Bud narrates. The bat turns out to be a hornets’ nest. “It’s really a fun, enjoyable, partly serious, partly just hilarious story of a real tough kid,” said Carol Edwards, a librarian at Rincon Valley Library in Santa Rosa, Calif., who helps promote the Coretta Scott King Award. “What I really like about him was his sense of humor and his just indomitable spirit.”

The character of Bud just came to Curtis when he sat down to write. He said that’s what usually happens. “After a while a voice starts coming to me that grows and finally I nail the voice and you know who it is,” said Curtis, who does his writing each morning at the library by putting pen to paper. He also draws the details for his stories from his own life. One example is a song in “Bud, Not Buddy,” called “Mommy said ‘No.’” The song is an original by Curtis’ 8-year-old daughter Cydney. “Stories that I’ve heard about people, I can take those and kind of weave them all and make them all part of my story,” he

said.

His old job at the Flint factory gave him fodder for “The Watsons Go To Birmingham1963.” Curtis said many of the people he worked with there would drive hundreds of miles south during long breaks at the

plant.

He decided to do the same with his family, traveling to Florida. And that’s where the Watsons were supposed to go. That is, until son Steven brought home the Dudley Randall poem, “The Ballad of Birmingham,” about the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four girls. “When my son showed me the poem, I said ‘the Watsons want to go to Birmingham,”’ Curtis said, snapping his fingers. “The Watsons” deals with a dark day in the Civil Rights Movement; “Bud, Not Buddy” addresses the hardships of the Depression, giving child readers an unexpected history lesson from the perspective of a Black

hero.

Few authors write about Black children and their place in the world, Curtis said. • “If they can identify with a character in a book, then maybe they can identify with not knowing if your sister was in a church that was bombed by KKK members, or not knowing where you’re going to get your next meal,” Curtis said. Teacher Diane Fulfer said Curtis’ honest approach to everyday life and the timelessness of his characters are some of the reasons she uses “The Watsons” in her sixth-grade

class.

“It brought the students into reading and kept their interest, as we all know isn’t always that easy to do,” said Fulfer, who teaches at Simmons Middle School in Aurora, 111. Her class named “The Watsons” their favorite of the year. “It touches your heart,” she

said.

Curtis’ latest project is a brcalled “Bucking the Sarge,” about a 15-year-old Flint boy whose mother is a scam artist and wants to raise him to take over the business. He said the character would rather be a philosopher. In December, Curtis will be the commencement speaker and a graduate at the University of Michigan-Flint. Curtis says he was four credit hours short of his degree, but he’s finishing the requirements with an exam. His two children together will be able to see their father get his bachelor’s degree in political science. At 14 years apart, Curtis says they’ve seen different sides of him because his writing career came so late. Steven, 22, saw a father who came home from work dirty and tired. Cydney, 8, sees a father who’s home a lot, who takes them places like the White House for Easter. But he said if he would have started writing 20 years ago, he wouldn’t have enjoyed it. “It would’ve been more of a job,” Curtis said. “Now, I have a riot. I have a great life.”

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