The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes

          Admit it – you still have a soft spot for the fuzzy, somewhat loudmouthed heroine of Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse with her sunglasses, spunk, and several thousand ideas about what she wants to be when she grows up. Author Kevin Henkes, creator of Lily, offers a slightly older but still happily inventive protagonist in his 2014 Newbery Honor book The Year of Billy Miller.

          Billy Miller is worried. This fall he will be starting second grade, but after an unexpected fall during a summer vacation gains him a goose egg on his head, he wonders if he will be smart enough for this year of school. And that’s just the start. Second grade brings him lots to think about and more questions than he ever thought possible, including: what should he do when he accidentally gets off on the wrong foot with his nice teacher? Will that obnoxious girl sitting next to him EVER be quiet? And can he work a reference to vampire bats into an assigned poem about his mother? Despite his worries, Billy finds that many of these questions develop into great experiences – so great, in fact, that this might just be the Year of Billy Miller.

          Billy’s story is split into four sections, each of which focuses on a specific relationship in his life: Teacher, Father, Sister, and Mother. This narrative style highlights what Billy learns from each of these people, quietly teaching the important lesson that anyone, even your sometimes annoying baby sister, can teach you to look at the world in a new and exciting way – for instance, Billy learns about the necessity of creative thinking from his father, and from three-year-old Sally he discovers that glitter in a boy’s school project is not always a bad thing. Henkes’s story is a quick, lighthearted read, and is good choice for younger readers, read-aloud story time, or anyone wishing to remember their middle-school experience.