Strike up the band: the star of The Year of Billy Miller is back. In the equally winning Billy Miller Makes a Wish, Kevin Henkes gives his now eight-year-old protagonist a gently humorous new story line, as well as fresh worries to go with it.
When Billy wishes that "something exciting would happen" while he's blowing out the eight candles on his birthday cake, he doesn't mean that he wants his neighbor, Mr. Tooley, to die. Billy's dad assures him that the 92-year-old's death had nothing to do with Billy's birthday wish, but it's hard for the kid not to feel responsible. And when a previously undetected bat suddenly swoops around the Millers' basement--more excitement--Billy has to wonder: "Did he have some strange new power?"
Throughout a career that has generated dozens of books, Henkes has become children's literature's Mr. Rogers: for Henkes, feelings are the big story. Billy Miller Makes a Wish sees the child through not just guilt but also possessiveness (with his new birthday markers), embarrassment (he learns that his parents used to exchange love letters) and missing someone (Billy's dad spends a few days at art camp). Henkes's intermittent black-and-white thumbnails--as of Billy's sister Sally's broken animal erasers--reinforce the primacy of small things in the lives of children navigating a world scaled for adults. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author