Henry Huggins

Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary is a quiet and funny story for 7 year olds about a boy who finds a dog and then can't get him home.

What happens

Henry is in the third grade. His hair looks like a scrubbing brush and most of his grown-up front teeth are in. Apart from having his tonsils out and falling out of a cherry tree, nothing has ever happened to him at all.

He would quite like something to happen.

Then one Wednesday he comes out of swimming, buys a chocolate ice cream cone, and finds a thin dog standing behind him watching every single lick.

When Henry licks, the dog licks. When Henry swallows, the dog swallows.

The cone lasts about one more second. And that's that. Henry names him Ribsy because you can count his ribs.

The phone call home is a joy. Henry has to stand on the telephone book to reach the mouthpiece, while Ribsy scratches and then howls in the booth beside him and a small crowd gathers outside to find out what on earth is going on.

His mum says yes. There's one condition. Henry has to bring the dog home on the bus.

And this is where the book really gets going, because the driver says no dogs. Not unless the dog is in a box.

So Henry goes back into the shop and comes out with a hair tonic carton with "Don't Let Them Call You Baldy" printed on the side.

Ribsy gets in. Henry lifts the box, can't see his own feet, can't find the step, and can't reach the fare in his pocket. So he asks the driver, very politely, to take the dime out for him.

That driver says no too. The box needs a lid. And holes.

Honestly, that sequence is the whole book in miniature. Nothing dreadful happens. It's just one entirely reasonable obstacle after another, each one worse than the last, and it builds beautifully.

It's a kind book. Nobody in it is nasty. Henry's mum is patient and slightly despairing in a way you'll recognise.

A couple of things to flag. It's American and it's old, so there's third grade and nickels and dimes and a drugstore, and funny books turn out to be comics. None of it is difficult but you'll be asked.

The other is that a man turns up later on who says Ribsy is his dog. That's the one bit of real worry in the whole story, and a child who has just fallen for Ribsy will feel it.

What to read next

If your reader likes the pace of this, Beezus and Ramona is more small trouble at the same speed. Beezus is nine, her sister is four, and the four year old blows down her straw to see what happens and wipes her finger paints on the neighbours' cat.