Hawai'i children vote 'Bud' author No. 1

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Book Editor

CURTIS: Most proud of awards like Nene

But he says he didn't set out to write for children, and even after completing his third children's book, doesn't think about children as his audience when he's writing.

In the case of "Bud, Not Buddy" (Delacorte, 1999), his second novel and the one the children selected for the Nene, Curtis Powell said, he was fiddling with a story that had something to do with his grandfather, something to do with the historic auto body plant where he worked in Flint, Mich., and when his narrator appeared, it just happened to be a 10-year-old boy.

"I think a good story appeals across all ages. Just because the narrator is 10 years old, doesn't mean only 10-year-olds can understand it," said Curtis, speaking by phone from his home in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit.

In the same way, Curtis isn't surprised that a book about an African-American orphan set in wintery Flint would appeal to children in Hawai'i. "I think that situations are a lot more universal than we initially realize," he said.

Curtis' well-received first book, "The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963: A Novel" (Delacorte, 1997) wasn't written as a children's book at all. It was Curtis' editor that decreed that it should be a book for children, because the viewpoint of the events in 1963 Birmingham is that of a fourth-grader.

"When you're writing for children, you're really walking a tightrope because ... that editor is going to read it as an adult and if that adult doesn't like it, it won't get to the children. You really have to please both audiences," he said.

Which makes Curtis, father of two, all the more touched to have won a Nene: "When I got the list of other books that had won this award since the late '60s, it was just amazing to be considered part of that company," he said. "I think awards like this, where the children actually vote, are my proudest achievement."

The Nene Honor Books, runners-up in the voting by Hawai'i library patrons in grades 4-6, went to "Searching for David's Heart: A Christmas Story" by Cherie Bennett and "Music of Dolphins" by Karen Hesse.