Dear Mr. Henshaw Read Online Free Page B

of men.
    M OM: But not the marrying kind. (Sort of laughs.) I guess I’m really afraid I might find another man who’s in love with a truck.
    M E: (I think about this and don’t answer. Dad in love with a truck? What does she mean?)
    M OM: Why are you asking all these questions all of a sudden?
    M E: I was thinking if I had a father at home,maybe he could show me how to make a burglar alarm for my lunchbag.
    M OM: (Laughing.) There must be an easier way than my getting married again.
    End of conversation

 
    January 12
    Dear Mr. Henshaw,
    This is a real letter I am going to mail. Maybe I had better explain that I have written you many letters that are really my diary which I keep because you said so and because Mom still won’t have the TV repaired. She wants my brain to stay in good shape. She says I will need my brain all my life.
    Guess what? Today the school librarian stopped me in the hall and said she had something for me. She told me to come to the library. There she handed me your new book and said I could be the first to read it. I must have looked surprised. She said she knew how much I love your books since I check them out so often. Now I know Mr. Fridley isn’t the only one who notices me.
    I am on page 14 of Beggar Bears . It is a good book. I just wanted you to know that I am the first person around here to get to read it.
    Your No. 1 fan,
Leigh Botts
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    January 15
    Dear Mr. Henshaw,
    I finished Beggar Bears in two nights. It is a really good book. At first I was surprised because it wasn’t funny like your other books, but then I got to thinking (you said authors should think) and decided a book doesn’t have to be funny to be good, although it often helps. This book did not need to be funny.
    In the first chapter I thought it was going to be funny. I guess I expected it because of your other books and because the mother bear was teaching her twin cubs to beg from tourists in Yellowstone Park. Then when the mother died because a stupid tourist fed her a cupcake in a plastic bag and she ate the bag, too, I knew this was going to be a sad book. Winter was coming on, tourists were leaving the park and the little bears didn’t know how to find food for themselves. When they hibernated and then woke up in the middle of winter because they had eaten all the wrong things and hadn’t stored upenough fat, I almost cried. I sure was relieved when the nice ranger and his boy found the young bears and fed them and the next summer taught them to hunt for the right things to eat.
    I wonder what happens to the fathers of bears. Do they just go away?
    Sometimes I lie awake listening to the gas station pinging, and I worry because something might happen to Mom. She is so little compared to most moms, and she works so hard. I don’t think Dad is that much interested in me. He didn’t phone when he said he would.
    I hope your book wins a million awards.
    Sincerely,
Leigh Botts
    Â 
    January 19
    Dear Mr. Henshaw,
    Thank you for sending me the postcard with the picture of the lake and mountains and all that snow. Yes, I will continue to write in my diary even if I do have to pretend I am writing to you. You know something? I think I feel better when I write in my diary.
    My teacher says my writing skills are improving. Maybe I really will be a famous author someday. She said our school along with some other schools is going to print (that means mimeograph) a book of work of young authors, and I should write a story for it. The writers of the best work will win a prize—lunch with a Famous Author and with winners from other schools. I hope the Famous Author is you.
    I don’t often get mail, but today I received two postcards, one from you and one from Dad in Kansas. His card showed a picture of a grain elevator. He said he would phone me sometime next week. I wish someday he would have todrive a load of something to Wyoming and would take me along so I could get to meet