
A ten-year-old orphan in the Great Depression sets out to find the father he believes is a jazz musician
Bud Caldwell is ten years old and has left the foster home where he was mistreated. Carrying his suitcase of treasures, he sets off across Michigan in 1936 to find the man he thinks is his father, a jazz bandleader. Along the way he meets kind and unkind people.
Readers who like historical middle-grade novels.
A beloved children’s novel. It won the 2000 Newbery Medal.
Children’s Books · Great Depression · Jazz · Orphan
245 pages · ≈ 7 h
Bud Caldwell and the members of a jazz band.
Michigan during the Great Depression, 1936.
A funny, plucky narrator and a strong sense of time and place.
Funny, warm and moving.