A Practical Guide to Henry And Mudge Take The Big Test
I run a small literacy tutoring program for struggling first and second graders, and we use this book regularly. It sounds like just another entry in the Henry and Mudge series, but there are specific reasons it works well for certain kids, and some pitfalls you need to know about if you try to build a lesson plan around it. Henry And Mudge Take The Big Test is the fourth book in Cynthia Rylant's series. Henry is a young boy. Mudge is his dog. In this one, Henry has to take a standardized test at school, and Mudge waits at home the whole time. The plot is simple. That simplicity is the point. The book runs about 64 pages in most editions. The text is short per spread. The illustrations by Hulda Sueson are detailed enough that kids will want to look at them repeatedly. This matters because some children will skip over words and just stare at the pictures. You can work with that. You don't have to fight it.
Reading level and matching strategies
The Lexile measure sits around 420L to 470L depending on the edition. That puts it solidly in early independent reading territory for most kids finishing first grade or working through second grade. Flesch-Kincaid lands somewhere around grade 2.3. These numbers are useful as a starting point, not as a hard rule. I've had kids who struggle with longer sentences actually do better with this book than with some of the other leveled readers I try. The reason is structural. Rylant uses short, declarative sentences. Subject-verb-object. Very little embedded clauses. A kid who freezes on "Although it was raining, Henry still went outside" will handle "It rained. Henry went anyway." without any issue. Here's the thing most people miss though. The repetition pattern in this book is different from earlier titles in the series. Mudge does a lot of physical comedy that gets described in quick sequences. Henry reads through those passages faster than he reads the quieter moments. Kids who are practicing fluency tend to rush through the funny parts and then stumble on the emotional beats. I noticed this back in 2019 when a student kept reading the test-day scenes in a flat monotone while he was doing fine on the Mudge antics. I had him read those sections out loud while standing up and using his hands. It forced him to vary his pace. That trick works more often than I expect it to.
How to actually use this in a classroom or at home
If you're doing read-alouds, stop before the test scenes and have kids predict what Henry might feel. The book doesn't spell out his anxiety very directly. It shows it through small actions. He fidgets. He checks his pencil. He looks at the clock. That's it. Kids who are learning to read emotion in text will miss these cues if you don't point them out once or twice. For independent reading, I pair this with a simple graphic organizer where kids track Henry's feelings across three scenes: before the test, during the test, after the test. Three boxes. Two words per box. That's all. You'd be surprised how many kids can answer that prompt after reading the book once. One edge case I ran into recently involved a kid who is dyslexic and gets overwhelmed by dense blocks of text on a single page. Some editions of this book cluster multiple short paragraphs together, and the white space gets eaten up. The solution was straightforward. I printed pages from the PDF and gave him single-paragraph strips on separate paper. He read faster and with less avoidance behavior. It's a small change but it removes a real barrier for kids who already struggle with visual tracking.
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Common misunderstandings about this book
People sometimes treat it as just a casual fun read. It works better as a teaching tool for test anxiety, reading comprehension of character emotion, and inferring feelings from action rather than from direct statement. Rylant never writes "Henry was nervous." She shows him being nervous. That distinction is worth making explicit with your students or your child. Another thing: the Mudge subplots can distract from the main thread if you're trying to do a tight comprehension focus. Dogs jumping on furniture, chasing squirrels, eating things they shouldn't. It's charming. It's also a trap for kids who want to laugh and skip past the scenes that actually advance Henry's internal journey. I usually tell kids they can highlight or sticker the test-related pages as they go. That gives them permission to engage with the whole book while still letting them enjoy the dog stuff.
Where to find it
The book is widely available through Scholastic, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and most public library systems. I'd recommend getting a physical copy rather than relying on an audiobook if you're using this for teaching. The pacing of the narration can flatten the emotional beats I mentioned. A few library systems also have teacher copies available through their curriculum lending programs, which saves money if you're doing this repeatedly. There are study guide worksheets scattered across teacher resource sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and various educational blogs. Most of them are fine. I've made my own version that focuses on inference rather than plot recall, and I've found that approach sticks better with kids who breeze through the story without really processing what Henry experiences. If your child or student finishes this and seems bored, that's normal. The book isn't supposed to be thrilling. It's supposed to feel familiar and manageable. That's its real value for early readers who need to experience success with text rather than struggle through something too complex for their current level.
