But he only earns a penny for every empty Coke bottle turned in for recycling, so it will take a long time to get that bike.

Each chapter centers around Henry's ideas to get a bicycle, including selling boxes of bubble gum he found abandoned in an alley and buying a bike from an auction.

At the event, Henry's name is drawn in a raffle to receive $50 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.

"[1] Children's book expert May Hill Arbuthnot noted that it "involves some hilarious situations".