How does virtue and following rules relate to Bud, Not Buddy children's novel?

The "Rules for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself" appear to serve as a guide for Bud Caldwell to live his life. Bud often has no real adult to help him make decisions as he grows up, so these rules he makes for himself seem to serve as that purpose. The Rules regularly serve as a way for Bud to justify why adults do or say what they do, and they make sense of life's more puzzling moments for him by allowing him to use a rule to explain the behavior.

Survival becomes the virtue that Bud hunts for and finds in the hapless people he encounters on his journey. Surviving the Home is a virtue that all fellow orphans at the house respect and value. When this is no longer feasible with the presence of the bullies, Bud must move on and find his own survival, minus the support of the Home personnel. Finding that he can survive without being in presence of adults is the sad value that Bud earns and realizes while trying to find his family and still maintaining direction in his life. He struggles to keep hope in a world where he cannot find his father, or anyone who seems to place him above all things as he felt his mother once tried.

Hope comes in the form of the Good Samaritan character, from Leftie Lewis to the Hooperville helpers and on to his own "family" he finds in the band members. He constantly doubts his hope in each person but they seem to have enough of his stubborn quality to keep proving to Bud that they are there to help him and keep him on the journey to finding family and well being.