Part 3
On the way, hunger drives Bud to a mission handing out free breakfast. He has just missed the cutoff when a kind man and woman pretend he is their own son — ‘come on, Clarence’ — so he will not be turned away, and Bud gets a hot meal and a lesson in how strangers protect one another in hard times. Then he and Bugs reach the ‘Hooverville’ by the railroad tracks: not one shantytown but a whole rough city of tents and packing-crate shacks, full of people of every color who have lost everything and are waiting, like Bud, for a train out. Around the communal fire Bud learns the rules of this place — everyone shares, everyone helps — and meets Deza Malone, a thoughtful girl who talks with him about family and home, and gives him his first kiss. The people cook a shared stew, sing, and prepare for the westbound train due before dawn. Bud washes up, guards his suitcase, and lets himself feel, for a night, part of something like a family. But the mood is uneasy too: the railroad guards are cruel, the train is dangerous, and everyone knows that only some of them will make it aboard. Bud settles in to wait, closer than ever to leaving Flint behind.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Hard-road words: mission, Hooverville, communal, stew, weary… |
| Literary Elements | The kindness of strangers, a living setting, and a tender first friendship |
| Cross-Curricular | Hoovervilles: the shantytowns of the Depression |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Chapter 5 | ‘Come On, Clarence’ — a kind couple pretend Bud is their son so he can get a free mission breakfast; Bud learns how strangers shield one another in hard times. |
| Chapter 6 | The Hooverville — Bud and Bugs reach the trackside shantytown, share a communal stew, and Bud meets thoughtful Deza Malone while everyone waits for the westbound train. |
Four words, and together they describe an economy. A mission is a place giving free food or aid to the poor, and one serves the breakfast Bud eats by pretending to belong to a family. A Hooverville is a Depression shantytown of makeshift huts, and this one sprawls along the tracks. Communal means shared by a whole group, and the camp cooks one pot for everyone. A stew is a dish of meat and vegetables cooked slowly, and everyone in the camp adds something to it. Notice what the last two words do together. The mission line is charity from outside; the stew is not. Nobody in the Hooverville has enough, so nobody eats alone — and Curtis puts the most generous meal in the entire book in the poorest place Bud has ever stood.
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
This portion of Bud, Not Buddy links setting to conflict, then measures the human change produced by that collision. On the way, hunger drives Bud to a mission handing out free breakfast. He has just missed the cutoff when a kind man and woman pretend he is their own son — ‘come on, Clarence’ — so he will not be turned away, and Bud gets a hot meal and a lesson in how strangers protect one another in hard times. Then he and Bugs reach the ‘Hooverville’ by the railroad tracks: not one shantytown but a whole rough city of tents and packing-crate shacks, full of people of every color who have lost everything and are waiting, like Bud, for a train out. This event pattern makes “A Meal and a Camp” the section’s central reversal.
- A kind couple call him ‘Clarence’ so he can eat.
- Hunger leads Bud to a mission breakfast.
- Bud meets Deza Malone and they talk of home.
- Bud and Bugs reach the trackside Hooverville.
- The camp shares a communal stew around the fire.
Across Chapters 5–6, theme interacts with character and tenderness to complicate the apparent meaning of events. A theme Curtis returns to again and again is that in the hardest times, unrelated people become one another’s family. The couple who claim Bud as ‘Clarence’ owe him nothing, yet they shield him; the Hooverville feeds a boy it just met. This is not sentimental — these people are barely surviving themselves — which is exactly why their generosity means so much. Curtis is building an argument across the whole book: Bud has lost his blood family, but he keeps finding chosen family among strangers. Watch how each act of kindness prepares us for the ending, where Bud will finally find a family that is both chosen and, it turns out, his own. That authorial design makes “The Kindness of Strangers” a lesson in deliberate contrast.
The rough camp Bud enters was a real feature of the Depression, and it had a bitter nickname. As families lost their homes, they built shelters from whatever they could find — scrap wood, cardboard, flattened tin cans — on empty land at the edges of towns and along the railroads. People called these shantytowns ‘Hoovervilles,’ a jab at President Herbert Hoover, whom many blamed for the hard times. A Hooverville could hold a few families or thousands, and Curtis captures a real truth about them: they were desperate places, but also communities, where people who had nothing still shared food, kept a fire going, and looked out for the newcomer and the child. That nickname is worth pausing on. Naming your cardboard shack after the President is not despair; it is an accusation, made by people with no newspaper, no vote that anybody counted, and nothing to write it on but the town.
Think back over these chapters. A hungry boy reaches a breakfast line one minute too late — and a man and woman he has never met call out to their ‘son Clarence’ and fold him into their family long enough to feed him. Down by the tracks a whole city has risen out of cardboard and tin, its people of every color sharing one fire and one pot, singing while they wait for a train that will only take some of them. A thoughtful girl sits beside Bud and talks of home, and gives him a first kiss he will not forget. For one night, an orphan with a taped suitcase gets to feel what it is to belong.
- SATCentral Ideas — the main point of the passage as a whole
- TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated directly in the passage
- SATDetail — a fact the passage states directly
- SATWords in Context — what a word means the way this passage uses it
- TOEFLVocabulary — the meaning of a tested word as this passage uses it
- SATInference — a conclusion the passage supports without ever stating it outright
- TOEFLRhetorical Purpose — why the author included a particular detail
The camp Bud enters had a name repeated across Depression America: a Hooverville. When the economy collapsed after 1929, millions of people could no longer pay rent, and families were put out of their homes. With nowhere to go, they built shelter from whatever they could scavenge — scrap lumber, flattened tin cans, cardboard, and old crates — on vacant land at the edges of cities and along the railroad lines. A single Hooverville might shelter a few families or, in the largest cities, thousands of people living in these makeshift huts.
The name was an insult aimed at President Herbert Hoover, who led the country as the Depression began and whom many blamed for failing to end it. People bitterly attached his name to the symbols of their poverty: a ‘Hooverville’ was a shantytown, ‘Hoover blankets’ were newspapers used for warmth, and empty turned-out pockets were ‘Hoover flags.’ Yet these desperate places were not only misery. As Curtis shows, a Hooverville was often a real community, where people who had almost nothing still kept a shared fire burning, cooked pooled food in a common pot, passed along news of which towns had work, and looked after the sick, the old, and the newly arrived. The Hoovervilles are a stark picture of how far Americans fell in the 1930s — and a quiet testimony to how they endured by leaning on one another.
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 3 “The Kindness of Strangers”
A couple who owed Bud nothing pretended he was their son so he could eat. Write about a time a stranger, or someone you barely knew, showed you unexpected kindness — or a time you helped someone you didn’t know. What happened, and how did it feel? 6–10 sentences. End with what the moment taught you about people.
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 3 Complete!
You finished Chapters 5–6 of Bud, Not Buddy.
Here are your auto-graded results:
The best last step is to teach it. In your own words, explain what happened — retell a favorite scene, teach a character’s big choice, or sum up the main idea for a parent, friend, or classmate. When you can teach it clearly, you truly own it.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Christopher Paul Curtis. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Christopher Paul Curtis’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.