HENRY HUGGINS : HENRY AND RIBSY <i> by Beverly Cleary (Avon/Camelot: $3.50 each) </i>

The juvenile novels of Beverly Cleary were essential grammar-school reading for members of the Baby-Boom Generation. Unlike the Goody Two-Shoes characters who inhabited so many children’s books during the ‘50s and ‘60s, Henry Huggins seemed like a real boy. His intentions usually were good, but things somehow happened to him--like the bucket of green paint dumped all over him during a rehearsal for the school Christmas play, or the time he inadvertently dyed his dog pink with talcum powder. Some of these misadventures may seem a bit dated to young readers, but any male under the age of 45 will recall the abject terror a parent could cause with the kind of home barber’s kit Henry’s mother buys in “Henry and Ribsy.”