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Henry Huggins can't wait until he turns eleven years old, so he can have a paper route like his friend Scooter McCarthy. Henry wants to prove to the route manager that he is responsible enough to handle the job right now. First he thinks of giving away free kittens with newspaper subscriptions, and then his advertising scheme helps his class win the newspaper drive. But he still doesn't have a paper route. Will Ramona Quimby, making a real pest of herself, help Henry get the job he wants so much?
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Beverly Cleary I L L U S T R AT E D B Y Tracy Dockray viii Contents 1. 1 Henry’s Bargain 2. Henry and the Premiums 35 3. Henry’s Advertisements 75 4. 5. The Paper Drive 105 Henry’s New Neighbor 6. Ramona Takes Over 135 161 About the Author Other Books by Beverly Cleary Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher viii 1 Henry’s Bargain O ne Friday afternoon Henry Huggins sat on the front steps of his white house on Klickitat Street, with his dog Ribsy at his feet. He was busy trying to pick the cover off an old golf ball to see what was inside. It was not very interesting work, but it was keeping him busy until he could think of something better to do. What he really wanted, he decided, was to do something different; but 1 how he wanted that something to be different, he did not know. “Hi, Henry,” a girl’s voice called, as Henry picked away at the tough covering of the golf ball. It was Beatrice, or Beezus, as everyone called her. As usual, she was followed by her little sister Ramona, who was hopping and skipping along the sidewalk. When Ramona came to a tree, she stepped into its shadow and then jumped out suddenly. “Hi, Beezus,” Henry called hopefully. For a girl, Beezus was pretty good at thinking up interesting things to do. “What are you doing?” he asked, when the girls reached his house. He could see that Beezus had a ball of red yarn in her hands. “Going to the store for Mother,” answered Beezus, as her fingers worked at the yarn. “I mean what’s that in your hands?” Henry asked. 2 “I’m knitting on a spool,” Beezus explained. “You take a spool and drive four nails in one end, and you take some yarn and a crochet hook—like this. See?” Deftly she lifted loops of yarn over the nails in the 3 spool to show Henry what she was doing. “But what does it make?” Henry asked. “A long piece of knitting.” Beezus held up her work to show Henry a tail of knitted red yarn that came out of the hole in the center of the spool. “But what’s it good for?” Henry asked. “I don’t know,” admitted Beezus, her fingers and the crochet hook flying. “But it’s fun to do.” Ramona squeezed herself into the shadow of a telephone pole. Then she jumped out and looked quickly over her shoulder. “What does she keep doing that for?” Henry asked curiously, as he picked off a large piece of the golf ball cover. He was getting closer to the inside now. “She’s trying to get rid of her shadow,” Beezus explained. “I keep telling her she can’t, but she keeps trying, anyway. Mother 4 read her that poem: ‘I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see.’ She decided she didn’t want a shadow tagging around after her.” Beezus turned to her sister. “Come on, Ramona. Mother said not to dawdle.” “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” muttered Henry, as the girls left. Knitting a long red tail that wasn’t good for anything, and trying to get rid of a shadow—the dumb things girls did! They didn’t make sense. Then he looked at the battered golf ball in his hands and the thought came to him that what he was doing didn’t make much sense, either. In d