Dear Mr. Pretend Henshaw,

It’s funny how somebody says something, and you can’t forget it. I am thinking about Mr. Fridley saying that I needed a burglar alarm on my lunchbag. How could anybody put a burglar alarm on a paper bag? Today I used so much Scotch tape on my lunchbag that I couldn’t get my lunch out. Everybody laughed.

Dad should phone today or tomorrow. Maybe if he came home he would know how I could make a burglar alarm for my lunchbag. He was good about helping me make things in the past.

I reread your letter answering my questions and thought about your tips on how to write a book. One of the tips was listen. I guess you meant to listen and write down the way people talk, like in a play. This is what Mom and I said at supper:

End of conversation.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

This is a real letter I am going to mail. Maybe I should 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 fixed. She wants my brain to be in good shape. She says that 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 gave me your new book and said that I could be the first to read it. Probably I looked surprised. She said she knew how much I love your books since I borrow them so often. Now I know that 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 read it.

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 started thinking (you said that authors should think) and decided a book doesn’t have to be funny to be good, but it often helps. This book did not need to be funny.

In the first chapter I thought it was going to be funny because of your other books and because the mother bear was teaching her twin cubs to beg from tourists in the national park. Then when the mother died because a stupid tourist fed her a muffin in a plastic bag and she ate the bag, too, I knew this was going to be a sad book. Winter was coming, tourists were leaving the park and the little bears didn’t know how to find food for themselves. When they went to sleep and then woke up in the middle of winter because they had eaten all the wrong things and didn’t have enough fat, I almost cried. I surely was happy 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 can happen to Mom. She is so little compared to most moms, and she works so hard. I don’t think Dad is very much interested in me. He didn’t phone when he promised.

I hope your book wins a million awards.

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 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 better now. Maybe I really will be a famous author someday. She said that our school together with some other schools is going to print a book of works of young authors, and I should write a story for it. The writers of the best work will win a prize – a 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 got two postcards, one from you and one from Dad in Kansas. His card showed a picture of a truck. He said he would phone me sometime next week. I wish someday he would have to drive a load of something to Wyoming and would take me along so I could meet you.

That’s all for now. I am going to try to think up a story. Don’t worry. I won’t send it to you to read. I know you are busy and I don’t want to be a nuisance.