The Year of Billy Miller

I have officially procrastinated the writing of this review longer than any other in the [very short] time I've been blogging about Newberys. Perhaps I delay because I have very little to say about The Year of Billy Miller. I liked it. It was cute. It was funny (Sal and the Drop Sisters got me every time). It was heart-warming. It was short.

One highlight of the novel (the climax, actually) was Billy's assignment to write a poem about one of his family members for his final project in second grade. He feels bad picking one parent over the other, but realizes choosing his mom would make her really happy. So, he decides to let Mama and Papa choose a number between one and ten and automatically declare his mother's number the winner. It works. In class the next day, he spends time on his poem.

Billy had trouble getting started. He opened his poetry journal to the first page and wrote: My Mom. He couldn't think of anything else to write, so he drew a series of volcanoes in progressive stages of exploding. There was still enough space in the margin on the left-hand side of the paper to write the word MOM vertically, so Billy decided that he would try an acrostic. In a burst of inspiration he wrote:

 My

Only

Mother

Poetry's not too bad, he thought. He could definitely memorize this poem. He returned to drawing volcanoes.

I suppose Billy's poem is a little like this book: cute, funny, heart-warming, and short.