The Year of Billy Miller Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary

  • It's diorama time, so everyone gathers supplies together and Mama pulls out three shoeboxes that Ned, Billy, and Sal can use. Papa, the master artist around these parts, is on hand to help out.
  • Since Ned wants to make a sea habitat, he's got some seashells ready to rock and roll in his diorama. And Sal is psyched because she gets to use glitter on her sea habitat.
  • And then there's hard-working Billy. He's putting some serious time and effort into his bat cave diorama. Sure, he gets frustrated while he's struggling to make a big bat look like it can fly, but eventually he and his dad figure the whole thing out.
  • So everything should be good, right? Well not so fast. Billy is feeling like his bat cave is looking pretty awesome until he compares it to Ned's and Sal's—their underwater dioramas both look seriously snazzy with different colors for the ocean.
  • Now all those warm fuzzy feelings of awesomeness go down the drain for poor Billy, and he's left feeling mad at the whole world, including his dad, for his diorama not looking cool enough. And it doesn't help when Sal and Ned tease Billy, too.
  • You can guess that at this point Papa gets annoyed at the whole situation. So Mama comes in to help clean up.