“Henry Huggins” is Beverly Cleary’s first published novel, and it’s a delight. Henry is a precocious little boy who’s just a bit prone to getting into trouble, not that it’s his fault, but fate just keeps interfering with his plans, sometimes in laugh-out-loud funny ways.
When we first meet Henry, he’s buying an ice cream cone after an afternoon of swimming at the YMCA. A hungry stray dog wanders up to him and starts licking its chops. Henry doesn’t want to share, but the dog looks starved, with all those ribs sticking out through its fur, so Henry gives up the rest of his cone. He can’t stand the thought of the poor dog out on the streets, so he calls his mother to ask if he can bring the dog home with him. She says yes, as long as he can find a way to get the dog on the bus.
First he tries just carrying the dog on, but the driver says the dog must be in a box. So Henry puts the dog (by now called Ribsy, because of his protruding ribs) into a small box. But the next bus driver says the box must be closed up. Henry tries that, but the driver after that says the box must be tied with strings. Henry finally gets Ribsy on the bus, in a box, tied with paper and string, but Ribsy worms his way out and causes all sorts of havoc on the bus. But that doesn’t keep him from becoming a most beloved pet.
This book is set up like a series of short stories, each comprising a chapter, but able to stand on their own as well. We see Henry going out in the dead of night to collect night crawlers to earn money, and getting out of starring in the school play by getting drenched in green paint. He also breeds a million guppies in his bedroom, using up every single one of his mother’s fruit jars.
I’d recommend this book for readers ages 8 and up (and their parents.) Written in 1950, the reader is taken to a gentler, more innocent time, when it’s safe for children to ride the bus all by themselves. I was taken with the gentle charm of this book and will for sure be grabbing others in the Henry Huggins series.
(This book was published in 1950 by Morrow Junior.)
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