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Author Curtis to captivate Rackham audience tonight

Christopher Paul Curtis holds the perceptions and opinions of the young in high esteem. "I believe that young people are often blessed with the best ears for detecting what rings true or what feels right in a particular piece of writing. To me the highest accolade comes when a young reader tells me, `I really liked your book.' The young seem to be able to say `really' with a clarity, a faith and an honesty that we as adults have long forgotten. That is why I write," he said in an interview.

Perhaps it is this conviction about the honesty of a child's perspective that moved Curtis to choose a young boy as the protagonist for his story of an African American family who travels to Alabama in the midst of the racial tension of 1963. "The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963" is Curtis' first novel, aimed at young adults ages 10 and up. He will be reading selections from this work at Rackham Amphitheatre today at 5p.m. as part of the Borders/Hopwood reading series.

"The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963" is a wryly funny tale of an idiosyncratic family composed of 10-year-old Kenny, his hard-working father, practical mother, humorous sister and his13-year-old brother, an "official juvenile delinquent" who is so vain he freezes his lips to the car mirror while kissing his own reflection.

The first half of the book is concerned with describing the Watsons' life in the frigid temperatures of Flint, Mich., as Kenny navigates through the wilderness of childhood bullies, mysterious new kids at school and fleets of toy dinosaurs.

When the adolescent Byron carries his attention-grabbing antics too far, the Watson family decides to make a trek to Alabama -- and, consequently, to the sordid, segregated south of the early '60s -- to let him spend the summer with Grandma Sands. It is here that Curtis subtly blends the story of the offbeat Watsons with the true story of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in September 1963, an event that killed four young girls. Writing through the eyes of the observant Kenny, Curtis' voice remains consistently in a state of innocent wonder, and he never loses his believability, even when describing a child's reaction to a horrific event.

In reading this novel, you can't help but wonder how much of these humorous situations were drawn from Curtis' own childhood in Flint. He has said that he felt a burning desire to write ever since he realized that he couldn't talk his way out of many of his problems. He abandoned this interest for a time to pursue a more solid, reliable job after graduating from high school, when he took a job hanging doors on cars at Flint's historic Fisher Body Plant No.1. He held this job for 13 years. And it required a push from his wife, who told Curtis he "better hurry up and start doing something constructive with his life or else start looking for a new place to live," to bring him back to his original love of the written word.

While attending the Flint campus of the University, Curtis tested his writing skills and was pleased with the results, winning the Avery Hopwood Prize for major essays and the Jules Hopwood Prize for an early draft of "The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963."

The result of these efforts is an engaging, charming book, both "constructive" enough to please Curtis' wife and imaginatively humorous enough to entertain a lively audience at Rackham tonight.