Curtis, Christopher Paul (1954-…), is an American children’s author. In 2000, Curtis won the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award, two of the top prizes in children’s literature. The Newbery Medal is given annually by the American Library Association to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature published in the preceding year. The Coretta Scott King Award honors African American authors and illustrators of outstanding books portraying the Black experience for young readers. Curtis received both awards for his novel Bud, Not Buddy (1999). He was the first African American man to win the Newbery Medal. Curtis received a second Coretta Scott King Award in 2008, for Elijah of Buxton (2007). In 2020, Curtis won the Regina Medal. The award is presented by the Catholic Library Association to honor a lifetime contribution to children’s literature. In 2024, Curtis won the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Curtis set Bud, Not Buddy during the Great Depression, a period of economic hardship in the 1930’s. The young hero is a 10-year-old Black orphan named Bud Caldwell. The novel describes how the boy searches for the man he believes to be his father. The Mighty Miss Malone (2012) is a sequel.
Curtis’s fiction mixes hope, humor, and optimism with the exploration of such serious themes as racism, child abuse, and poverty. He bases numerous characters in his stories on members of his own family and sets much of the action in his home town of Flint, Michigan.
Curtis’s first novel was The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 (1995). The story is narrated by Kenny Watson, another 10-year-old Black boy, who travels with his family from Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 to visit his grandmother. In Birmingham, the Watsons witness the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, an actual event in which four African American girls were killed. Bucking the Sarge (2004) takes place in Flint and deals with 15 year-old Luther T. Farrell and his greedy and domineering mother. Elijah of Buxton (2007) and The Madman of Piney Woods (2014) are historical novels set in North Buxton, Ontario, a town founded by formerly enslaved people from the United States.
Curtis was born on May 10, 1954, in Flint. He worked in an automobile assembly plant in the city from 1972 to 1985. He then held a series of jobs before becoming a full-time writer. He received a B.A. degree in political science from the University of Michigan at Flint in 1996.
