Ribsy

Beverly Cleary's Ribsy is a dog story for 8 year olds, told from the dog's end of the lead the whole way through.

What happens

Ribsy belongs to Henry Huggins. He is a plain ordinary city dog, the sort strangers call Mutt or Pooch in a friendly way, and he takes it as a compliment.

His one real problem is a flea. It lives under his collar, exactly where his back foot can't get at it, and it has been driving him mad for days.

The Hugginses have a brand new station wagon and a rule about muddy paws. So when the family sets off to the shops, Ribsy is left on the pavement. He runs after the car anyway, catching up at every stop sign, until Henry's mum gives in (Henry's dad, meanwhile, has been timing him on the speedometer at twenty miles an hour).

Then Henry takes his dog's collar off so he can finally have a proper scratch. It's a kind thing to do. It also means that when Ribsy gets out of the car in an enormous car park, in the rain, he has no name and no address on him at all.

This is where the book is really clever. You watch it all happen through Ribsy's nose. He knows Henry as a mixture of smells (sneakers, raincoat, a bit of cat, the coffee grounds spilled on the kitchen floor that morning), and he cannot find that smell anywhere in acres of oil and exhaust.

He does find a new car that smells right, hops in through the open tailgate, and falls asleep. It isn't the right car. Ribsy is colour-blind and one station wagon is much like another.

The dog's-eye view is very funny. Puppies in a pet shop window are silly young things. A yapping Pomeranian called Fluffy needs putting in his place. A small girl hugging you too tightly is something you wait out, because patience works.

The bit to think about is how genuinely frightened he gets. Once the rain starts he panics, runs into traffic, gets braked at and shouted at, and doesn't know which way home is. A child who has ever lost a pet, or who worries about it, may find that stretch hard going. If you've got a reader who mainly wants to know what happens next, they'll be turning the pages fast.

It's American too, so expect a station wagon rather than an estate car and a parking lot rather than a car park.

What to read next

Henry and Ribsy swaps the view round, with the same boy, the same dog and the same house on Klickitat Street, except this time it's Henry trying to keep his dog out of trouble with the neighbours.