"Billy Explores His World" chronicles the early life of the author, born just before the Great Depression in 1929. The story tells how, by renting other houses, his parents avoided mortgage foreclosure on the Sears home they had built in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Billy and his parents moved frequently, fished for food several times each week, wore "hand-me-downs," and lived in a house without electrical power for three years. "Minnie," a tiny, warm, quivering black puppy is given Billy. Their love and partnership is documented with accounts of their experiences, including how one of Billy's teachers, because of her devotion to her profession, received a gift of a puppy for helping Billy. Doing school work under the dim light of an oil lamp, and toasting marshmallows over it, working as a farm hand in summer, visiting New York City at age fifteen with his cousin, these reflections and others will help the young reader to learn how a child lived and learned in the 1930's and 1940's.