From: SHERIF SUE _ <fsss>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 11:27:01 -0900 (AKST)

Different strokes for different folks. I got off to a slow start with Bud but warmed as I read more. I particularly liked the characterizations of the two older men, so my admiration for Curtis' portraits of them was solidified when I read that they were based on his grandfathers. The kind of connections that bond a reader to a book are so mysterious!

I perked up in my reading of the novel when Curtis first described the


inscribed rocks, and one had the incription "logootee, in". I knew immediately that these were some sort of travel log, but continued reading with more alertness because it happened I was reading a history of my mother's birthplace (Logootee, Indiana) at the same time. When I learned that the band leader was based on an actual person, this tiny connection grew because I became very curious about whether Curtis picked this out-of-the-way town based on his grandfather's acutal travels, and then wondered if an African American band could have actually appeared in such a small town in SOUTHERN Indiana earlier in the twentieth century. Reading on in the local history I learned that there WERE hotels and even resorts in Martin Co.,Indiana, so I thought this might have been
 plausible after all. This tiny detail and coincidence in my reading is exactly what can draw us into a book. As I read, I thought that I would be very attracted to the presentation of Bud's rules if I were reading the book as a child, even though as an adult I found them a bit irritating, but I can still remember liking that sort of thing when I was a much younger reader. Along the different strokes in response to BUD NOT BUDDY line, I am usually irritated when an author puts references to librarians --positive or negative--in books for children. (I know that this is irrational because, of course, I want the world to be reflected in children's books, and I certainly have put in my time over the last 25 years making sure that the public library is part of many children's world.) Something curmudgeonly in me always assumes that the author is making a bald?ce pitch to us, a large section of her or his book-buying audience. There are exceptions to this gut feeling--I have excused Barbara Cooney for making Miss Rumphius a librarian (in fact, I love her for Miss Rumphius' librarianship), and now that I have heard Curtis talk to Terry Gross on the radio about how important libraries are to him with such apparent sincerity, I am pleased that Bud finds refuge on the library lawn and with the librarian and with the books. Sue Sherif
Received on Sat 29 Jan 2000 02:27:01 PM CST