Image
The Year of Billy Miller - Kevin Henkes - 10/05/2013 - 2:00pm

The Year of Billy Miller

Children's

When Billy Miller visits the statue of the Jolly Green Giant at the end of summer vacation, he has an unlucky fall and ends up with a small lump on his head. What a way to start second grade, with a lump on your head! As the year goes by, though, Billy figures out how to navigate elementary school, how to appreciate his little sister, and how to be a more grown up and responsible member of the family and a help to his high school teacher mom and work-at-home artist dad. Newbery Honor author and Caldecott Medalist Kevin Henkes delivers a short, satisfying, laugh-out-loud-funny school and family story that features a diorama homework assignment, a school poetry slam, cancelled sleepovers, and epic sibling temper tantrums. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white spot art by the author, this is a perfect short novel for the early elementary grades.

Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes is the author and illustrator of more than fifty critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, beginning readers, and novels. He received the Caldecott Medal for Kitten’s First Full Moon in 2005, and Waiting won a Caldecott Honor and Geisel Honor in 2016. Kevin Henkes is also the creator of a number of picture books featuring his mouse characters, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Lilly’s Big Day and Wemberly Worried, the Caldecott Honor Book Owen, and the beloved Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. His most recent mouse character, Penny, was introduced in Penny and Her Song; her story continued in Penny and Her Doll, Penny and Her Marble (a Geisel Honor Book), and Penny and Her Sled. Bruce Handy, in a New York Times Book Review piece about A Good Day, wrote, “It should be said: Kevin Henkes is a genius.” Kevin Henkes received two Newbery Honors for novels—one for his newest novel for young readers, The Year of Billy Miller, and the other for Olive’s Ocean. Also among his fiction for older readers are the novels JunoniaBird Lake MoonThe Birthday Room, and Sun & Spoon. Kevin Henkes has been published by Greenwillow Books since the release of his first book, All Alone, in 1981. His fiftieth book, the picture book Egg, was published in January 2017. Most recently, he is the author of In the Middle of Fall, Winter Is HereA Parade of Elephants, Sweeping Up the Heart, Penny and Her Sled, Summer Song, and Sun Flower Lion. He lives with his family in Madison, Wisconsin.

Recent Book
Waiting