NPR / HarperCollins

When Beverly Cleary's fictional Henry Huggins made his debut in 1950, he was a third grader whose "hair looked like a scrubbing brush and most of his grown-up front teeth were in."

He was also bored. Apart from having his tonsils out and falling out of a cherry tree, "nothing much happened to Henry."

But pretty soon after we meet him, by page three in fact, Henry comes upon a scrawny mutt who stares at him eating an ice cream cone – and the adventures begin. "When Henry licked, he licked. When Henry swallowed, he swallowed," Cleary wrote of the dog. Henry adopts the hungry stray, calls him Ribsy and the two become fast, fun-loving friends prone to mishaps.

/ HarperCollins / HarperCollins

"I thought he was the coolest little kid," said writer Joe Bonomo who

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