Henry and Beezus

Henry and Beezus is a children's novel written by Beverly Cleary and illustrated by Louis Darling, the second Henry Huggins novel preceded by Henry Huggins and followed by Henry and Ribsy.

Plot Overview

Henry desires a new bicycle after seeing an older boy, Scooter McCarthy, with one, but the one he wants, at $59.95, is far out of his price range. Every chapter centers around Henry's efforts to build up his bicycle fund or otherwise acquire a bicycle, including selling boxes of bubble gum he found abandoned in an alley and purchasing an old bicycle from an auction.

In the climactic episode, Henry and his family attend the grand opening of the new supermarket in town. While at the event, Henry's name is drawn in a raffle to receive fifty dollars' worth of beauty treatment coupons at the supermarket's beauty parlor. After his friend Beezus Quimby asks to buy one of the coupons from him, Henry manages to turn his initial humiliation at winning what he had considered a useless prize into a windfall; he agrees to sell Beezus the coupon she wants, and his mother helps to stir up interest amongst her friends and acquaintances for the majority of the rest. After Henry raises nearly fifty dollars from the sale of the coupons, Mr. Huggins decides to make up the difference, and Henry triumphantly rides home from the bicycle shop on his shiny new bicycle.