collection. Then a new boy, Rufus, and his brother move to town. Kenny and Rufus become friends until Kenny fails to stand up for Rufus. Their friendship falters until Kenny’s mother intercedes and patches things up.

Kenny is family-oriented and observant in family issues, always watching the family dynamics and what goes on with Bryon when he gets in trouble. Kenny also is gullible and falls for Byron’s tall tales, like the one about how people freeze to death in the streets at night and garbage collectors pick them their bodies before dawn. He likes spending time with his father, especially after the Ultra-Glide is installed in the family car. His favorite song is “Yakety Yak.” In Flint, he is an obedient boy who usually enjoys watching Byron get into trouble. However, he also longs for adventure.

In Birmingham, he becomes a little adventurous, defying his parents and Byron and almost drowning in a whirlpool.

However, he shows how sensitive he truly is when the church is bombed and he thinks Joetta was killed in the explosion. It takes him weeks to recover, hiding behind the couch until Byron gradually coaches him out. Byron said Kenny was brave because he was the only one in the family who looks inside the church.

A dynamic character is one who changes, typically because of some conflict he or she encounters.

Kenny transforms in his views of Byron. For much of the book, Kenny sees his brother as a tough, wisecracking older brother who is there when he's in a bind, but their relationship is fairly superficial. He doesn't really trust him, particularly if Byron happens to be treating him with rare kindness. In chapter 6, he mentions that "Byron was being too nice, so I knew something bad was about to happen." And later he comments, "I wasn't used to being this friendly with Byron so I guess I was kind of nervous."

However, when Kenny needs an emotional rescue after the church bombing, it is Byron who alleviates his fears. Byron both comforts him by keeping him company and being honest with him about what he saw at the church, and he tells Kenny that there is no magic in the couch that will heal him. Kenny will have to figure out how to live in a world with people who commit horrendous acts. This is part of Kenny's transformation.

In many ways, this is a coming of age novel. Kenny has a new understanding of his world, one that Joey is still shielded from. Kenny understands that the world can be cruel and that sometimes violence finds even the most innocent of people in the most holy places. He also learns that life is precious. After nearly losing Joey, Kenny has a renewed appreciation for his family and a new perspective about the importance of their time together.

In literature, a dynamic character is a character who changes throughout the course of the story. The opposite of this is a static character.

Kenny Watson, a character in the novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham, written by Christopher Paul Curtis, is a dynamic character. Kenny changes from a young boy who gets bullied in the fourth grade to an older boy who believes in himself and his own abilities. Kenny, as a grade school student, would rely on his older brother to protect him from other people and things in the world. At one point, Kenny spends time hiding behind a couch because he is so afraid of the world and the horrible things that happen. Kenny changes into a boy who believes in himself when his older brother tells him how brave he is for finding his sister after the bombing in the church. This story is a story of growing up as well as the importance of sibling bonds.

Kenny is a dynamic character because he changes from a scared kid who believes in magical powers to someone who understands his inner strength. At the beginning of the book, he is constantly scared and harassed by the bullies at his school, and he relies on his older brother, Byron, for protection. Later, he almost drowns while swimming in Alabama, and he believes, as Byron tells him, that a mythical creature named a "Wool Pooh" (a misunderstanding of his grandmother's pronunciation of "whirlpool") is to blame. He says, "I found out that the Wool Pooh was real and big and mean and horrible and that he didn’t care at all about dragging kids out into the water!" 

This great coming-of-age novel presents us with Kenny Watson, the middle child of the Watson family, who is presented as a sensitive, intelligent boy trying to make sense of the world around him and survive school and the "attentions" of his older brother, Byron. We are told that Kenny is very intelligent for his age, as in Chapter 2 he has to read out loud in front of his brother's class, even reading upside down to stop him reading too quickly. This leads to him being called Egghead and Pointdexter by his school-fellows who bully him because of his intelligence. Another thing that characterises Kenny is his lazy eye:

Momma says it wasn't important, that I was a real handsome little boy, but ever since I'd been born one of my eyeballs had been kind of lazy. That means instead of looking where I tell it to look, it wanted to rest in the corner of my eye next to my nose.

Byron helps him reduce the effects of this "lazy eye," but this, combined with Kenny's intelligence, means that he is bullied greatly at school and is ostracised by his class-mates until Rufus and his brother arrives.