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Mrs. Sleet
Todd’s mother and Mr. Amos’s husband. The Amoses, a middle-class family, are Bud Caldwell’s third foster family. Mrs. Amos dismisses her son’s blatant physical abuse—she watches Todd beat up Bud but still accuses Bud of beating up her son—and treats Bud cruelly by taking his suitcase and having her husband lock him in a shed. The Amoses are a large part of the reason that Bud decides to run away from Flint, as their cruelty makes him all the more determined to find a real person or family that wants him.
Mrs. Amos Quotes in Bud, Not Buddy
The Bud, Not Buddy quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Amos or refer to Mrs. Amos. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2 Quotes
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 118
You have to give adults something that they think they can use to hurt you by taking it away. That way they might not take something away that you really do want. Unless they’re crazy or real stupid they won’t take everything because if they did they wouldn’t have anything to hold over your head to hurt you with later.
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Chapter 3 Quotes
After while the stings and fish-guard bite quit hurting so much. I started getting madder and madder. I was mad at the Amoses, but most of all I was mad at me for believing there really was a vampire in the shed and for getting trapped like this where there wasn’t anybody who cared what happened to me.
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Mrs. Amos Character Timeline in Bud, Not Buddy
The timeline below shows where the character Mrs. Amos appears in Bud, Not Buddy. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...three little girls, the caseworker reveals that Bud will be taken in by Mr. and Mrs. Amos and their 12-year-old son. The woman emphasizes that Bud and Jerry should both be happy...
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Chapter 2
Eventually Mrs. Amos comes in while Todd is kicking Bud, though she does not interrupt him. Instead she...
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...Bud’s rule is that lies should be as simple as possible, although he concedes that Mrs. Amos would believe anything Todd said anyway.
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Mrs. Amos consoles Todd, and she calls Bud a “beastly little brute.” She says that she refuses...
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Mrs. Amos berates Bud for being ungrateful and a foolish member “of our race.” She says she...
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Bud hardly listens to Mrs. Amos ; he is still upset that they looked in his suitcase, so he starts to...
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Mr. Amos takes Bud’s suitcase away while Mrs. Amos leads Bud to Todd’s room. Bud apologizes to Todd, then to Mr. Amos, and then...
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...that is left of him is a “big puddle of his blood on the floor.” Mrs. Amos gently cautions Todd to not tire himself.
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Chapter 5
...folded differently than how he usually folds it. He knows that it was Mr. and Mrs. Amos , but after realizing that nothing is missing, he admits that though they are “mean...
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