This is an old favorite of mine, but I haven’t read it in many years. I was almost afraid to read it again. I’ve been rereading a lot of favorite books lately, and many of them have been disappointing. The books simply aren’t as good as they used to be. Ribsy, however, seemed as sweet, fresh and funny as it was when I read it to my little brother over forty years ago.

Ribsy is a good-natured mutt who lives with his boy Henry Huggins. He certainly never intended to run away, but one rainy day he escapes from the parked car while his family is shopping to chase a little dog who has been barking at him, and finds himself lost and confused in the parking lot.

“Ribsy had a pretty good nose, but unfortunately he was no bloodhound. He had never tracked a lost child over mountains and through forests. He was just an ordinary city dog, trying to track his owner across an enormous parking lot that smelled of oil and exhaust.”

And so Ribsy’s adventures begin. He’s misses Henry and the familiar pattern of life at home, but he has no idea how to find his way home. He’s an optimistic and resourceful dog, and he makes some friends along the road. He doesn’t like the violet-scented bubble bath he receives from a group of rambunctious children in one home. He enjoys his time as the class mascot for a group of second-graders until the day someone brings their pet squirrel for show-and-tell. Lonely old Mrs. Frawley is kind, but Ribsy doesn’t really like wearing a coat, or posing for her friends wearing a straw hat and spectacles and clutching a corncob pipe between his teeth. When he disrupts the final play of the high school football game, he gets his photo in the newspaper, which ultimately helps Henry, who never gave up hope, to find him.

The wonderful thing about this book is the point of view, which is almost totally Ribsy’s. We see the world through the dog’s eyes…or more often, his nose. We understand how he thinks, what he wants and how he feels.

Although I still love this story, I couldn’t help but feel like the Huggins family are terribly irresponsible dog owners. They allow Ribsy to come and go as he pleases and roam freely through the neighborhood unleashed. In the opening chapter, they leave him alone outside when they go on their shopping expedition, and allow him to chase the car for several blocks through busy intersections, only stopping to let him in the car when Henry worries that he’s going to get run over.

But when I was growing up, there were no leash laws and all of our dogs ran free. Lots of neighborhood dogs chased cars. And it was sad but not particularly unusual for dogs to run away and get lost, or to get hit by a car and be injured or killed. I don’t think it’s fair to judge the Huggins family by today’s dog care standards, but I wonder how today’s kids, raised in a leash-law world, see this aspect of the book.

This is a collection of original rhymes that have the nonsensical charm of Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes. These are poems for the very young, and they aren’t meant to be read as poems, but to be chanted in a sing-songy way while bouncing a baby on the knee, carrying a toddler on the shoulders, or counting out fingers and toes. The authors are sisters, and Clyde’s rhymes are perfectly illustrated by Wendy’s simple, timeless pictures of happy babies and small children.

Several of the rhymes here just don’t appeal to me, but a few have become true favorites and ones that I have used over and over as a Children’s Librarian, as a volunteer working with homeless kids in shelters, and teaching in China. My favorite rhyme here is a simple one:

Phoebe in a rosebush
Phoebe in a tree
There’s many a Phoebe in the world
But you’re the one for me

I have used this many times as a welcome rhyme, substituting each child’s name, usually going around the circle and having a puppet do the rhyme in various funny voices. Kids love hearing their own names and anxiously await their turns, and it helps me learn everyone’s name and make sure they all get at least a little personal attention right at the start of the session.

This book is a companion to the equally wonderful earlier book by Chyde and Wendy Watson, Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes, now back in print, and filled with such favorites as this one:

Ride your red horse down Vinegar Lane,
Gallop, oh gallop, oh gallop again!
Thistles & foxholes & fences beware:
I’ve seventeen children but none I can spare.

Both books are great fun for sharing with the very young.