BEVERLY BILLINGSLY TAKES A BOW

Beverly Billingsly is back (Beverly Billingsly Borrows a Book, 2002), this time with a new venue for her worries: auditions for the school musical called Stormy Weather. Stadler again employs his distinctive illustration style of pastel watercolors with thick black outlines applied with a charmingly wobbly effect. His heavily outlined illustrations, animal characters, and confident use of sophisticated vocabulary recall the work of William Steig, with a similar success in conveying an amusing, original story with an unobtrusive theme tucked inside. Because Beverly freezes during her audition, she’s cast in two very small roles (as The Wall and The Shrub) with just one line, but she finds plenty to do in preparation for the production: learning all the lines of the play, building sets, making costumes and a banner, and baking 200 cupcakes. Busy beaver Beverly also saves the play with some judicious prompting when The Thunder Queen forgets her lines, and the final page shows Beverly in her shrub costume savoring the sweet sound of applause. Stadler succeeds in both his amusing illustrations and his well-paced, polished story, and surely Beverly will be back for an encore, perhaps baking brownies, buying a bicycle, or building a bridge as she conquers new fears. (Picture book. 3-7)