Henry Huggins

Written by: Beverly Cleary

First line: Henry Huggins was in the third grade.

Why you should read this book. Although it is over seventy years old, there is still much delight to be found in this quiet novel about a small boy who feels as if nothing interesting ever happened to him until the day he shared his ice cream cone with a skinny, medium-sized, mixed-breed dog. Of course, the ordinary world of any child who plays outside his house, takes the bus into town, and has a life that doesn't involve being tied to a screen tends to offer plenty of interesting moments, such as when Henry accidentally breeds hundreds of guppies in his bedroom or when he digs up twelve hundred worms to pay off a debt incurred when he accidentally throws a neighbor boy's football into a passing car. While some of the references, especially the monetary ones, are dated (Henry's allowance is a quarter a week and his ice cream costs a nickel), I love the idea of modern children reading about a time when kids inhabited their own, largely unsupervised world and moved through it with a sense of agency, and, as a bonus, Cleary's more popular and enduring characters, Beezus and Ramona, have some cameos.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't like dogs, fish, or worms.