Billy's Booger: A Memoir

Gr 1–4—In this most unusual picture book/memoir mash-up, Joyce describes a moment during his childhood that kicked off his writing and drawing career. Billy (aka Joyce) is an outside-the-box thinker whose attempts to make math, spelling, and PE more fun often land him in hot water, leading the school principal to dub Billy "one of my most challenging students ever." When the librarian announces a writing competition, Billy knows that his book, a quirky tale of a booger with superpowers, is a sure winner. However, "Billy's Booger" goes unnoticed at the contest, and Billy is dejected—until his classmates come across it and are bowled over by the boy's talent. Rendered in mixed media, Joyce's rich painterly spreads vividly convey small-town 1960s America (details such as Billy's mother's beehive hairdo are a nice touch). Joyce also visually emphasizes his own inability to fully conform with his more conventional community: Billy's fantastic imagination shows him taking out an impossibly huge stack of books from the library in order to derive inspiration for his story, while "Billy's Booger," tipped in to the center of the book and illustrated with childlike scrawls and bursting with zaniness, contrasts effectively with the cloyingly cute contest winners "The Super Cute Kitty of Haha Land" and "Save the World with Puppys." The text is effective, though a bit purposeful, driving home the message that there's nothing wrong with being different.