Oh, Sal

Ages 8 to 12, Grades 3 to 7

A stand-alone companion to two-time Newbery Honor author Kevin Henkes’s award-winning and acclaimed The Year of Billy Miller and Billy Miller Makes a Wish. This short, humorous, and accessible novel for newly independent readers focuses on Billy’s younger sister, Sal, and the story unfolds during an eventful holiday season at the Miller house. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews calls Oh, Sal “delightfully superb.” Oh, Sal is for fans of Ramona, Ivy + Bean, and Dory Fantasmagory. 

It’s Christmas, and the Miller family is celebrating their first holiday with the new baby. Billy is excited that Uncle Jake is visiting, but nothing about this holiday season is making Sal happy. The baby is a noisy nuisance and hogging all of Mama’s attention. Plus, the baby doesn’t even have a name yet. To make matters worse, Sal has lost a gift that Santa gave her!Will Sal find her present? Will the Millers find a name for the baby? Will Billy always be an obnoxious big brother? The holiday season (and life with the Millers) is full of surprises—and warmth, kindness, family, celebration, and love—in the hands of award-winning author Kevin Henkes. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white art by the author, Oh, Sal is an excellent choice for early elementary grades, as well as a terrific family and classroom read-aloud for every time of the year.Illustrated in black-and-white on every page by the author.

About the Author

Kevin Henkes is the author and illustrator of more than sixty critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, beginning readers, and novels. He is the winner of the American Library Association’s 2020 Children’s Literature Legacy Award; 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 The Year of Billy Miller and the other for Olive’s Ocean. Also among his fiction for older readers are the novels Junonia, Bird Lake Moon, The Birthday Room, Sun & Spoon, and Sweeping Up the Heart. 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 Summer Song, Sun Flower Lion, Billy Miller Makes a Wish, A House, Little Houses, and The World and Everything in It.He lives with his family in Madison, Wisconsin. You can visit him online at www.kevinhenkes.com.