Henry And Ribsy

Henry and Ribsy is a children's novel by Beverly Cleary about a boy and his dog navigating a series of comic misadventures in their neighborhood.

On a Saturday morning, Henry Huggins rides with his father and his dog Ribsy to a service station for a car lubrication. Henry fulfills a small wish by riding up on the grease rack inside the car while the mechanic works below. From his perch, he boasts to his friend Scooter McCarthy, an older boy, that his father plans to take him salmon fishing. Scooter, who caught a silverside (coho) salmon the previous year, scoffs that Henry could never land a chinook, a large Pacific salmon. The conversation is cut short when Ribsy jumps into a parked police car, steals the officer's lunch, and devours it before Henry, stuck on the grease rack, can intervene. When Mr. Huggins returns and pays for the ruined lunch, he proposes a bargain: If Henry keeps Ribsy out of trouble, with no complaints from the neighbors, between now and the salmon fishing trip in mid-September, Henry can come along. Henry agrees eagerly but soon recalls Ribsy's history of stealing a neighbor's barbecue roast and swiping Scooter's newspapers, and he begins to worry the bargain may be harder to keep than he thought.

About two weeks later, Henry takes on the chore of carrying out the household garbage daily for a raise in allowance. On the following Monday, Ribsy charges the garbageman, snarling and jumping at him. The terrified man drives off, warning Henry to keep Ribsy shut up or keep his garbage. With the garbageman refusing to collect, a full week's garbage festers in the summer heat. Flies invade the kitchen, their next-door neighbor Mr. Grumbie closes his windows against the smell, and the neighborhood rumor swells into a claim that Ribsy bit the garbageman and tore his overalls.

On Sunday, Henry's neighborhood friend Beezus and her little sister Ramona visit. When Ramona yanks Ribsy's tail, the dog responds mildly, showing his gentle nature. Minutes later, Scooter begins wheeling Henry's bicycle out of the garage, and Ribsy growls and advances. The moment Scooter drops the bike, Ribsy stops. Henry realizes Ribsy was not being vicious; he was protecting what he saw as Henry's property. The garbageman had been taking Henry's garbage, so Ribsy guarded it. Henry is relieved to have proven Ribsy is not dangerous. Mr. Huggins agrees to resume garbage duty in exchange for Henry clipping the lawn edges weekly, and they decide to put Ribsy in the basement on collection days.

With the first day of school approaching, Henry has two loose upper canine teeth he wants to show off, so he is dismayed when his mother announces she bought electric hair clippers on sale. Mrs. Huggins clips the back of Henry's head too short. Mr. Huggins takes over but fares no better, leaving Henry's hair uneven and gouged, looking "as if the moths had got into it" (75). Henry hides the damage under a sailor hat and distracts visiting friends, including his friend Robert, by displaying his loose teeth, but Scooter eventually snatches the hat, exposing the haircut to ridicule. Henry later learns that his mother quietly phoned Robert's and Scooter's mothers about the clipper sale, and both families gave their sons equally bad haircuts: Robert's slightly worse than Henry's, and Scooter's worst of all, bald on one side.

The next day, Robert and Scooter appear wearing their own sailor hats, ignoring Henry. He deduces they received home haircuts too and lures them back by offering to pull his loose teeth. He ties a string between the two teeth, then ties Ribsy's tug-of-war rope to the middle and tosses the free end to Ribsy. Ribsy grabs the rope, growls, and tugs; both teeth fly out painlessly. Henry explains that since they were canine teeth, he thought it fitting to let his dog pull them. He also discovers he can shoot two streams of water through the gaps, giving him something to show off at school.

After school one September day, Beezus and Ramona visit again. Ribsy knocks Ramona's chocolate ice cream cone off the porch and devours it. Henry offers to buy a replacement, but Ramona snatches Ribsy's bone and locks it in her lunch box. At the nearby school playground, Ramona begins screaming that she wants "some P.T.A." (121). Beezus figures out that Ramona, whose family spells treat words like C-o-k-e to keep her from begging, thinks the initials P-T-A spell something delicious. Henry and Beezus buy potato chips to pass off as P.T.A., but while they are in the store, Ramona climbs the jungle gym clutching the lunch box, and Ribsy puts his paws on the first rung to reach his bone. Mrs. Wisser, a friend of Henry's mother, sees the scene and concludes Ribsy has chased a terrified child up the equipment. Citing the inflated garbageman rumor, she goes to fetch Miss Mullen, the school principal. Mothers streaming out of a P.T.A. meeting gather around, debating whether to call the pound. Miss Mullen calmly intervenes, stating that she has watched Ribsy from her office window for a long time, knows him to be good-natured, and has never seen him bother any child. She tells Ramona to come down and return the bone. Ramona complies, and when Mrs. Wisser asks directly if the dog frightened her, Ramona says no. Henry's fishing trip remains safe.

On a Friday evening, Mr. Huggins announces the fishing trip to the Umptucca River for the next morning. Henry is allowed to bring Ribsy. They rise before dawn and drive to the coast with Mr. Grumbie. At Mike's Place boathouse, Henry eyes the hanging scales and dreams of weighing a huge salmon. They motor out to the sandbars, shallow sandy ridges at the river's mouth where salmon enter from the ocean. Hours pass in cold rain. When Mr. Grumbie finally hooks a large salmon, Mr. Huggins uses a gaff, a hook on a pole, to haul the fish into the boat. The flopping salmon slaps against the sleeping Ribsy, who panics and scrambles over the gear. The hook tears free, and the salmon flops overboard. Ribsy leaps out the other side of the boat, and the powerful current carries him backward toward the open ocean breakers. Mr. Huggins cannot start the motor, and Henry nearly falls overboard trying to reach his dog before a fisherman from another boat hooks Ribsy's collar with a gaff and hauls him to safety. Mr. Grumbie, who lost what he estimates was a 25-pound fish, says little. Mr. Huggins tells Henry to take Ribsy to the boathouse, ending Henry's chance to fish for the day.

Henry waits at the boathouse with a wet, smelly Ribsy. When visitors complain about the odor, Henry takes the dog outside and wanders down the beach to avoid facing Scooter, whose family's car he has spotted. As the afternoon wears on, Ribsy begins barking furiously at something in a shallow stream. Henry discovers an enormous chinook salmon struggling upstream in water too shallow to cover its body. Without any tackle, Henry wades into the icy stream and tries to scoop the fish onto the sand, but it slips through his hands. He throws off his coat and jacket and flings himself bodily onto the salmon. After several attempts, he gets a hand into the fish's rough gills and holds on, pinning it in the shallows. A man on the beach, drawn by Ribsy's barking, arrives with a piece of driftwood and clubs the fish.

Back at the boathouse, Henry hangs his catch on the scales: It weighs 29 pounds. Mr. Huggins takes a photograph of Henry beside the fish with Ribsy at his feet. Mr. Grumbie, who caught a salmon of his own that afternoon, admires the catch. Scooter and his father arrive; Scooter caught nothing and carries only his lunch box. The man who helped Henry tells everyone how the boy tackled the salmon with his bare hands. Henry, feeling generous enough to pity Scooter, calls a casual goodbye and heads for the car in celebration.