![]() ![]() In his latest novel, Elijah of Buxton, Curtis introduces us to an 11-year-old hero – loquacious, quick-witted, comically confident, and touchingly emotional – who was the first child born free in Buxton, a Canadian farming village of escaped slaves, just across the border from Detroit. Born in Michigan but now a longtime Windsor-based Canadian, Curtis writes prose that radiates enough energy and warmth to leap borders and melt boundaries. ![]() His second novel, Bud, Not Buddy, richly deserved its Newbery Medal and Curtis’s second Coretta Scott King Award. ![]() How extraordinarily lucky we are, then, to have Christopher Paul Curtis, who charms us with tall-tale extravagance, tickles us with rowdy humour, rivets us with piercing emotional truths, and brings history alive with jolting immediacy.Ĭurtis first blazed onto the literary scene with The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, which scooped a Newbery honour and the Coretta Scott King Award. Great and tragic events – such as war, famine, or genocide – can make for stilted writing that is hobbled by the need to respect the victims. The path of contemporary children’s literature is strewn with worthy novels intended to teach and preach that mostly fail to ignite any response. ![]()
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