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The Legend of Buddy Bush (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books)
Shelia P. Moses

Margaret K. McElderry, 2003 - 224 pages

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   highly recommended  highly recommended



One of the best books I have ever read.

"The Legend of Buddy Bush" is indeed one of the best books I have ever read. There are not enough good books for our children to read and this one is at the top of my list.
Pattie Mae is smart and a character that we all can relate to.


From the pen of Moses

I've often railed, in my various Amazon.com reviews, against simplistic children's books. For thousands of adults, children's books (to them) are meant to be straightforward tales of good and evil. The good guys are always good. The bad guys are very bad. And this is especially true for poorly written books that deal with race and racism in America. So it was with great trepidation that I picked up, "The Legend of Buddy Bush". Sure, it had won the coveted Coretta Scott King Award. Sure, it also garnered itself a hard-to-get National Book Award Honor. But I've read plenty of award winners that left a sour taste in my mouth. The fact that this was author Shelia P. Moses' first children's book was not encouraging. Most first time authors make all the usual mistakes. Fortunately for us, Ms. Moses is not most authors.

There are a lot of things in this world that Pattie Mae likes. She likes eating her grandma's plump strawberries straight from the garden when no one's looking. She likes sitting and talking with her grandfather for long periods of time. She likes getting letters from her elder sister in Harlem and dreaming of the day she can leave this poor North Carolina town. And she loves her Uncle Buddy. Buddy's not strictly related to her per say, but he's always been a part of her family, especially since he returned from living in New York City. Now Pattie Mae's grandpa is sick with a brain tumor and the girl really feels she deserves a nice trip into town with Buddy to watch a picture show. But when Buddy refuses to move off the pavement when a white woman passes him, the woman makes a big show of claiming that Buddy tried to make a pass at/rape her. Now Buddy's in the violent hands of the law and it's all Pattie Mae can do to see the two most important men in her life, her grandpa and her uncle, slip away from her for entirely different reasons.

The book bears a great deal of similarity to Mildred Taylor's chronicles of the Logan family. As with Taylor's books, the family in "The Legend of Buddy Bush" are black land holders. Also, they must deal with their white prejudiced neighbors at every turn. But this book stands on its own as well. For one thing, no one here is a perfect saint. Our heroine, Pattie Mae, is apt to silently insult and detest her female relations while placing the men in the family on their own separate pedestals. Her Uncle Buddy is a male chauvinist pig who obeys his father but doesn't think twice about ignoring his mother. Every person in this book is a well-rounded believable human being. They aren't perfect or always heroic. The men boss the women around and the women boss the men. In the end, however, these are people you end up caring for. So when tragedy comes to Uncle Buddy, you hate to watch it happen. You may not feel he's the wonderful guy that Pattie Mae thinks he is, but when she and her family collapse weeping to see him working on a chain gang outside their very home, you understand why.

In the back of the book, Moses gives full credit to the real Buddy Bush and his story. She includes pictures of the barn, house, and courthouse when this tale takes place. She shows us her real grandmother and grandfather and even includes a shot of Buddy Bush himself. She also tells the story of the real Buddy, complete with the elements that are like and unlike those retold in this tale. It gives it that little extra shove that brings the book from being okay to quite good.

Now I wouldn't go handing this book to your six or seven-year-old. Though the heroine is twelve there's plenty of breast squeezing and idle speculation on infidelity to make this a bit of an older reader. Still, if you know a mature child who wants a good jolt of historical fiction, aside from anything Mildred Taylor wrote (and much shorter at that) is this little tale. It's funny and quite sad, but not depressing in a pathological way. A title well worth reading.



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A Touching Book!

The Legend of Buddy Bush was one of the Best Books I have ever read. It teaches love, understanding, life, and loss. Shelia P. Moses really captures the reader. I couldn't put the book down and I thought it was wonderful. When I finished, I wished I hadn't because I loved it and I think that it really led me to understand how things were "back then."
A wonderfully compelling tale.






Anachronistic

I'll add to BookerNow"Skip"'s list of anachronisms that the term "male chauvinist pig" did not come into existence until the late 1960s. Moses's use of that term smacks of author intrusion, and jarred me right out of the story, which I'd been enjoying up to that point (despite the author's anachronistic inclusion of plastic spoons and TVs!). Historical novelists have a responsibility to accurately portray the times in which their stories are set.


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The day Uncle Goodwin "Buddy" Bush came from Harlem all the way back home to Rehobeth Road in Rich Square, North Carolina, is the day Pattie Mae Sheals' life changes forever.

Pattie Mae adores and admires Uncle Buddy -- he's tall and handsome and he doesn't believe in the country stuff most people believe in, like ghosts and stepping off the sidewalk to let white folks pass. He unsettles the dust and brings fresh ideas to Rehobeth Road. But when Buddy's deliberate inattention to the protocol of 1947 North Carolina lands him in jail for a crime against a white woman that he didn't commit, Pattie Mae and her family are suddenly set to journeying on the long, hard road that leads from loss and rage to forgiveness and pride.

Shelia P. Moses tells a moving and lyrical story in The Legend of Buddy Bush that introduces the remarkable and memorable character of Pattie Mae Sheals -- a girl whose sense of humor, ability to get into "grown folks business," and determination to know the truth will endear her to readers everywhere.


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