Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work! Small, precise black-and-white drawings punctuate and decorate the pages. Billy’s slightly dreamy interior life isn’t filled with either angst or boisterous silliness-rather, the moments that appear in these stories are clarifying bits of the universal larger puzzle of growing up, changing and understanding the world.

Henkes offers what he so often does in these longer works for children: a sense that experiences don’t have to be extraordinary to be important and dramatic. Her pillowcase full of the plush yellow whales she calls the Drop Sisters (Raindrop, Gumdrop, etc.) is a memorable prop. The wonderfully self-possessed Sal, his 3-year-old sister, is to Billy much as Ramona is to Beezus, but without the same level of tension. Four sections-Teacher, Father, Sister and Mother-offer different and essential focal points for Billy’s life, allowing both him and readers to explore several varieties of creative endeavor, small adventures, and, especially, both challenges and successful problem-solving. Billy Miller’s second-grade year is quietly spectacular in a wonderfully ordinary way.īilly’s year begins with his worry over the lump on his head, a souvenir of a dramatic summer fall onto concrete: Will he be up to the challenges his new teacher promises in her letter to students? Quickly overshadowing that worry, however, is a diplomatic crisis over whether he has somehow offended Ms.

The year of billy miller review