The Book Beat and the Berkley School District is honored to present Award winning author Christopher Paul Curtis at the Berkley High School auditorium on October 9th from 7-9 PM. Mr. Curtis will be presenting his latest book The Madman of Piney Woods. Berkley High Auditorium is located at 2325 Catalpa, just east of Coolidge. This event is free and open to the public. Tell a friend, bring a friend! We appreciate your support!
Christopher Paul Curtis is the Newbery Award Winning author of Bud, Not Buddy (The Newbery Award is the highest award given by the ALA for a novel geared for up to age 14 in the USA). Mr. Curtis’ novels The Watsons Go To Birmingham – 1963 and Elijah of Buxton both won Newbery Honors and all three books won the Coretta Scott King Award, an annual award given to African American writers.
“Bud’s journey, punctuated by Dickensian twists in plot and enlivened by a host of memorable personalities, will keep readers engrossed from first page to last.”—Starred review, Publishers Weekly
Praise for his newest book The Madmen of Piney Woods:
“…what Curtis does here, with his theme of fear and what it can do to a human soul, is as profound and thought provoking as anything he’s written in the past. There is ample fodder here for young brains. The fact that it’s a hoot to read as well is just the icing on the cake.” –Elizabeth Bird, Review of the Day, Fuse 8
In his new book Curtis returns to the town of Buxton (where Eijah of Buxton took place) forty years later.
“To me the highest accolade comes when a young reader tells me, ‘I really liked your book.’ The young seem to be able to say ‘really’ with a clarity, a faith, and an honesty that we as adults have long forgotten. That is why I write.”—Christopher Paul Curtis
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Flint, Michigan, Christopher Paul Curtis spent his first 13 years after high school on the assembly line of Flint’s historic Fisher Body Plant # 1. His job entailed hanging car doors, and it left him with an aversion to getting into and out of large automobiles—particularly big Buicks.
Curtis’s writing—and his dedication to it—has been greatly influenced by his family members. With grandfathers like Earl “Lefty” Lewis, a Negro Baseball League pitcher, and 1930s bandleader Herman E. Curtis, Sr., of Herman Curtis and the Dusky Devastators of the Depression, it is easy to see why Christopher Paul Curtis was destined to become an entertainer.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 tells the story of 10-year-old Kenny and his family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan, and their unforgettable journey that leads them into one of the darkest moments in American history. It is by turns a hilarious, touching, and tragic story about civil rights and the impact of violence on one family.
Curtis’s novel Bud, Not Buddy focuses on 10-year-old Bud Caldwell, who hits the road in search of his father and his home. Times may be hard in 1936 Flint, Michigan, but orphaned Bud’s got a few things going for him; he believes his mother left a clue of who his father was—and nothing can stop Bud from trying to find him.
