BUD, NOT BUDDY, by Christopher Paul Curtis, Delacorte Press, New York, 245 pages, $15.95.

The Great Depression has served as the setting for a number of fictional works, for adults and younger readers. This dark period in our history offers stories of destitution, but also of survival. Christopher Paul Curtis’ “Bud, Not Buddy,” which won this year’s Newbery Prize for “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children,” delves into both sides of this bleak era as viewed through the eyes of 10-year-old Bud Caldwell.

When we first meet Bud, he is living in an orphanage in Flint, Mich., and is about to be packed off to his third “temporary care” family. His mother had died four years earlier and his father left when he was a baby. Bud is a sympathetic character, brave, kind, determined — and capable of mischief as when he pulls the old warm-water-on-a-sleeping-kid trick. He is also tough noting several times, “My eyes don’t cry no more.”

Throughout the book, we read the refrain “Bud, not Buddy,” as the young boy explains to new acquaintances his preferred name. His strong-willed mother had told him “Buddy is a dog’s name or a name someone’s going to use on you if they’re being false-friendly. Your name is Bud, period.”

The boy sets out to find his father. His only clues are some fliers for a jazz band and a handful of rocks with names and dates on them. Readers join in the search with curiosity and pleasure. Orphanages, cruel foster parents and soup lines are some of the obstacles he faces, but a guardian angel seems to be looking out for him. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, he is eventually united with kin.

Bud learns a lot on his journey. He stays in a cardboard jungle for a time, called Hooverville, notes a resident because “Mr. Hoover worked so hard at making sure every city has got one that it seems like it would be criminal to call them anything else.” That’s where Bud has his first kiss, or as he puts it, “The first time I’d ever busted slob with a real live girl.”

From Lefty Lewis, he finds out about the labor movement in America. “A union is like a family,” Lewis explains. “It’s when a group of workers get together and to try to make things better for themselves and their children.”

The author has a genial sense of humor. Bud’s ruminations on the loss of a tooth sound like a Bill Cosby “Kids Say the Darndest Things” segment.

“Unless you’re as stupid as a lamppost,” Bud muses, “you’ve got to wonder what’s coming off next, your arm? Your leg? Your neck? Every morning when you wake up it seems a lot of your parts aren’t stuck on as good as they used to be.”

Throughout the book we read, “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself,” Dave Barrylike aphorisms that the young protagonist has created to deal with certain situations. For example, Rules and Things Number 39 is “The Older You Get, the Worse Something Has to Be to Make You Cry.” We also come to know Bud’s favorite expressions, like “kiss my wrist,” and “woop, zoop, sloop.” Curtis sometimes transcribes his young hero’s pronunciations to humorous effect. Jules Verne’s adventure story is “Twenty Thousand Leaks Under the Sea.”

Bud eventually hooks up with Herman E. Calloway and the Nubian Knights of the New Deal, a popular jazz band that spends most of its time on the road. He comes to understand the power of music. “All the instruments took turns trying to interrupt the conversation,” he observes, “but in the end it was Miss Thomas’ voice and Steady’s saxophone doing the talking that you really wanted to listen to.”

When the band nicknames him “Sleepy LaBone” and gives him his own instrument, you feel that Bud has found his home. As he says while practicing his new saxophone, “I could tell those were the squeaks and squawks of one door closing and another one opening.”

In an afterword, Curtis, who lives with his family in Windsor, Ontario, explains that many of the situations Bud encounters are based on events that occurred in the 1930s. What is more, several characters are drawn from actual people, including Lefty Lewis and Herman E. Calloway, who are loose portraits of his grandfathers. He encourages young readers to talk with their elders, to ask for stories of their time before it’s too late.

“Bud, Not Buddy” confirms the promise of Curtis’ first book, “The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963,” which was a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor book. In his acknowledgements, Curtis credits a range of writers and editors for helping him along the way, including Ashley Bryan, the acclaimed children’s book illustrator and author from Maine’s Little Cranberry Island. Like his hero Bud, Curtis has received the kind of encouragement that leads to success and survival in the big world of children’s books.

Carl Little’s translations of the French poet Robert Desno’s poems for children were published as a Backwoods Broadside. He directs the Ethel H. Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.