Christopher Paul Curtis · 1999 · coming-of-age

Christopher Paul Curtis's Newbery-winning novel, set in Michigan in 1936. Ten-year-old Bud Caldwell, motherless and shunted between the Home and foster families, runs from the last of them with a cardboard suitcase of rocks, a photograph and a handful of band flyers - convinced the bandleader named on them is the father he has never met, and that Grand Rapids is where to find him.

1. 1
   Flint

   Bud is sent from the Home to the Amos family, beaten by their son Todd, made to apologise for it and locked in the shed overnight - and comes out at dawn with his suitcase, finished with foster homes for good.

2. 2
   The library

   He goes to the library for Miss Hill, who has always helped him, and finds she has married and moved away - but the library gives him what he needs: the distance from Flint to Grand Rapids, and proof a boy could walk it.

3. 3
   Hooverville

   At the shantytown by the railroad tracks his friend Bugs takes him in among people sharing what little they have - and before dawn the westbound train pulls out early, Bugs makes it aboard and Bud, running, does not.

4. 4
   Owosso

   He walks west out of Flint by night, hiding in the bushes when cars pass - and at half past two outside Owosso, a sundown town, Lefty Lewis stops precisely because a Black boy alone on that road is in danger.

5. 5
   Grand Rapids

   Lefty drives him the rest of the way, and Bud walks in on Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky Devastators of the Depression - to find the man is far too old to be his father, and is something he had never thought to hope for instead.