Dear Mr. Henshaw Read online

  Beverly Cleary

  Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky

  Contents

  May 12

  Private Diary of Leigh Botts

  January 12

  From the Diary of Leigh Botts

  February 15

  From the Diary of Leigh Botts Vol. 2

  March 31

  From the Diary of Leigh Botts

  About the Author

  Other Books by Beverly Cleary

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  May 12

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  My teacher read your book about the dog to our class. It was funny. We licked it.

  Your freind,

  Leigh Botts (boy)

  December 3

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  I am the boy who wrote to you last year when I was in the second grade. Maybe you didn’t get my letter. This year I read the book I wrote to you about called Ways to Amuse a Dog. It is the first thick book with chapters that I have read.

  The boy’s father said city dogs were bored so Joe could not keep the dog unless he could think up seven ways to amuse it. I have a black dog. His name is Bandit. He is a nice dog.

  If you answer I get to put your letter on the bulletin board.

  My teacher taught me a trick about friend. The i goes before e so that at the end it will spell end.

  Keep in tutch.

  Your friend,

  Leigh (Lēē) Botts

  November 13

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  I am in the fourth grade now. I made a diorama of Ways to Amuse a Dog, the book I wrote to you about two times before. Now our teacher is making us write to authors for Book Week. I got your answer to my letter last year, but it was only printed. Please would you write to me in your own handwriting? I am a great enjoyer of your books.

  My favorite character in the book was Joe’s Dad because he didn’t get mad when Joe amused his dog by playing a tape of a lady singing, and his dog sat and howled like he was singing, too. Bandit does the same thing when he hears singing.

  Your best reader,

  Leigh Botts

  December 2

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  I got to thinking about Ways to Amuse a Dog. When Joe took his dog to the park and taught him to slide down the slide, wouldn’t some grownup come along and say he couldn’t let his dog use the slide? Around here grownups, who are mostly real old with cats, get mad if dogs aren’t on leashes every minute. I hate living in a mobile home park.

  I saw your picture on the back of the book. When I grow up I want to be a famous book writer with a beard like you.

  I am sending you my picture. It is last year’s picture. My hair is longer now. With all the millions of kids in the U. S., how would you know who I am if I don’t send you my picture?

  Your favorite reader,

  Leigh Botts

  Enclosure: Picture of me. (We are studying business letters.)

  October 2

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  I am in the fifth grade now. You might like to know that I gave a book report on Ways to Amuse a Dog. The class liked it. I got an A-. The minus was because the teacher said I didn’t stand on both feet.

  Sincerely,

  Leigh Botts

  November 7

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  I got your letter and did what you said. I read a different book by you. I read Moose on Toast. I liked it almost as much as Ways to Amuse a Dog. It was really funny the way the boy’s mother tried to think up ways to cook the moose meat they had in their freezer. 1000 pounds is a lot of moose. Mooseburgers, moose stew and moose meat loaf don’t sound too bad. Maybe moose mincemeat pie would be OK because with all the raisins and junk you wouldn’t know you were eating moose. Creamed chipped moose on toast, yuck.

  I don’t think the boy’s father should have shot the moose, but I guess there are plenty of moose up there in Alaska, and maybe they needed it for food.

  If my Dad shot a moose I would feed the tough parts to my dog Bandit.

  Your number 1 fan,

  Leigh Botts

  September 20

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  This year I am in the sixth grade in a new school in a different town. Our teacher is making us do author reports to improve our writing skills, so of course I thought of you. Please answer the following questions.

  How many books have you written?

  Is Boyd Henshaw your real name or is it fake?

  Why do you write books for children?

  Where do you get your ideas?

  Do you have any kids?

  What is your favorite book that you wrote?

  Do you like to write books?

  What is the title of your next book?

  What is your favorite animal?

  Please give me some tips on how to write a book. This is important to me. I really want to know so I can get to be a famous author and write books exactly like yours.

  Please send me a list of your books that you wrote, an autographed picture and a bookmark. I need your answer by next Friday. This is urgent!

  Sincerely,

  Leigh Botts

  De Liver

  De Letter

  De Sooner

  De Better

  De Later

  De Letter

  De Madder

  I Getter

  November 15

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  At first I was pretty upset when I didn’t get an answer to my letter in time for my report, but I worked it out OK. I read what it said about you on the back of Ways to Amuse a Dog and wrote real big on every other line so I filled up the paper. On the book it said you lived in Seattle, so I didn’t know you had moved to Alaska although I should have guessed from Moose on Toast.

  When your letter finally came I didn’t want to read it to the class, because I didn’t think Miss Martinez would like silly answers, like your real name is Messing A. Round, and you don’t have kids because you don’t raise goats. She said I had to read it. The class laughed and Miss Martinez smiled, but she didn’t smile when I came to the part about your favorite animal was a purple monster who ate children who sent authors long lists of questions for reports instead of learning to use the library.

  Your writing tips were OK. I could tell you meant what you said. Don’t worry. When I write something, I won’t send it to you. I understand how busy you are with your own books.

  I hid the second page of your letter from Miss Martinez. That list of questions you sent for me to answer really made me mad. Nobody else’s author put in a list of questions to be answered, and I don’t think it’s fair to make me do more work when I already wrote a report.

  Anyway, thank you for answering my questions. Some kids didn’t get any answers at all, which made them mad, and one girl almost cried, she was so afraid she would get a bad grade. One boy got a letter from an author who sounded real excited about getting a letter and wrote such a long answer the boy had to write a long report. He guessed nobody ever wrote to that author before, and he sure wouldn’t again. About ten kids wrote to the same author, who wrote one answer to all of them. There was a big argument about who got to keep it until Miss Martinez took the letter to the office and duplicated it.

  About those questions you sent me. I’m not going to answer them, and you can’t make me. You’re not my teacher.

  Yours truly,

  Leigh Botts

  P.S. When I asked you what the title of your next book was going to be, you said, Who knows? Did you mean that was the title or you don’t know what the title will be? And do you really write books because you have read every book in the library and because writing beats mowing the lawn or shoveling snow?


  November 16

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  Mom found your letter and your list of questions which I was dumb enough to leave lying around. We had a big argument. She says I have to answer your questions because authors are working people like anyone else, and if you took time to answer my questions, I should answer yours. She says I can’t go through life expecting everyone to do everything for me. She used to say the same thing to Dad when he left his socks on the floor.

  Well, I got to go now. It’s bedtime. Maybe I’ll get around to answering your ten questions, and maybe I won’t. There isn’t any law that says I have to. Maybe I won’t even read any more of your books.

  Disgusted reader,

  Leigh Botts

  P.S. If my Dad was here, he would tell you to go climb a tree.

  November 20

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  Mom is nagging me about your dumb old questions. She says if I really want to be an author, I should follow the tips in your letter. I should read, look, listen, think and write. She says the best way she knows for me to get started is to apply the seat of my pants to a chair and answer your questions and answer them fully. So here goes.

  1. Who are you?

  Like I’ve been telling you, I am Leigh Botts. Leigh Marcus Botts. I don’t like Leigh for a name because some people don’t know how to say it or think it’s a girl’s name. Mom says with a last name like Botts I need something fancy but not too fancy. My Dad’s name is Bill and Mom’s name is Bonnie. She says Bill and Bonnie Botts sounds like something out of a comic strip.

  I am just a plain boy. This school doesn’t say I am Gifted and Talented, and I don’t like soccer very much the way everybody at this school is supposed to. I am not stupid either.

  2. What do you look like?

  I already sent you my picture, but maybe you lost it. I am sort of medium. I don’t have red hair or anything like that. I’m not real big like my Dad. Mom says I take after her family, thank goodness. That’s the way she always says it. In first and second grades kids used to call me Leigh the Flea, but I have grown. Now when the class lines up according to height, I am in the middle. I guess you could call me the mediumest boy in the class.

  This is hard work. To be continued, maybe.

  Leigh Botts

  November 22

  Dear Mr. Henshaw,

  I wasn’t going to answer any more of your questions, but Mom won’t get the TV repaired because she says it was rotting my brain. This is Thanksgiving vacation and I am so bored I decided to answer a couple of your rotten questions with my rotten brain. (Joke.)

  3. What is your family like?

  Since Dad and Bandit went away, my family is just Mom and me. We all used to live in a mobile home outside of Bakersfield which is in California’s Great Central Valley we studied about in school. When Mom and Dad got divorced, they sold the mobile home, and Dad moved into a trailer.

  Dad drives a big truck, a cab-over job. That means the cab is over the engine. Some people don’t know that. The truck is why my parents got divorced. Dad used to drive for someone else, hauling stuff like cotton, sugar beets and other produce around Central California and Nevada, but he couldn’t get owning his own rig for cross-country hauling out of his head. He worked practically night and day and saved a down payment. Mom said we’d never get out of that mobile home when he had to make such big payments on that rig, and she’d never know where he was when he hauled cross-country. His big rig sure is a beauty, with a bunk in the cab and everything. His rig, which truckers call a tractor but everyone else calls a truck, has ten wheels, two in front and eight in back so he can hitch up to anything—flatbeds, refrigerated vans, a couple of gondolas.

  In school they teach you that a gondola is some kind of boat in Italy, but in the U.S. it is a container for hauling loose stuff like carrots.

  My hand is all worn out from all this writing, but I try to treat Mom and Dad the same so I’ll get to Mom next time.

  Your pooped reader,

  Leigh Botts

  November 23

  Mr. Henshaw:

  Why should I call you “dear,” when you are the reason I’m stuck with all this work? It wouldn’t be fair to leave Mom out so here is Question 3 continued.

  Mom works part time for Catering by Katy which is run by a real nice lady Mom knew when she was growing up in Taft, California. Katy says all women who grew up in Taft had to be good cooks because they went to so many potluck suppers. Mom and Katy and some other ladies make fancy food for weddings and parties. They also bake cheesecake and apple strudel for restaurants. Mom is a good cook. I just wish she would do it more at home, like the mother in Moose on Toast. Almost every day Katy gives Mom something good to put in my school lunch.

  Mom also takes a couple of courses at the community college. She wants to be an LVN which means Licensed Vocational Nurse. They help real nurses except they don’t stick needles in people. She is almost always home when I get home from school.

  Your ex-friend,

  Leigh Botts

  November 24

  Mr. Henshaw:

  Here we go again.

  4. Where do you live?

  After the divorce Mom and I moved from Bakersfield to Pacific Grove which is on California’s Central Coast about twenty miles from the sugar refinery at Spreckels where Dad used to haul sugar beets before he went cross-country. Mom said all the time she was growing up in California’s Great Central Valley she longed for a few ocean breezes, and now we’ve got them. We’ve got a lot of fog, especially in the morning. There aren’t any crops around here, just golf courses for rich people.

  We live in a little house, a really little house, that used to be somebody’s summer cottage a long time ago before somebody built a two-story duplex in front of it. Now it is what they call a garden cottage. It is sort of falling apart, but it is all we can afford. Mom says at least it keeps the rain off, and it can’t be hauled away on a flatbed truck. I have a room of my own, but Mom sleeps on a couch in the living room. She fixed the place up real nice with things from the thrift shop down the street.

  Next door is a gas station that goes ping-ping, ping-ping every time a car drives in. They turn off the pinger at 10:00 P.M., but most of the time I am asleep by then. Mom doesn’t want me to hang around the gas station. On our street, besides the thrift shop, there is a pet shop, a sewing machine shop, an electric shop, a couple of junk stores they call antique shops, plus a Taco King and a Softee Freeze. I am not supposed to hang around those places either. Mom is against hanging around anyplace.

  Sometimes when the gas station isn’t pinging, I can hear the ocean and the sea lions barking. They sound like dogs, and I think of Bandit.

  To be continued unless we get the TV fixed.

  Still disgusted,

  Leigh Botts

  November 26

  Mr. Henshaw:

  If our TV was fixed I would be looking at “Highway Patrol,” but it isn’t so here are some more answers from my rotten brain. (Ha-ha.)

  5. Do you have any pets?

  I do not have any pets. (My teacher says always answer questions in complete sentences.) When Mom and Dad got divorced and Mom got me, Dad took Bandit because Mom said she couldn’t work and look after a dog, and Dad said he likes to take Bandit in his truck because it is easier to stay awake on long hauls if he has him to talk to. I really miss Bandit, but I guess he’s happier riding around with Dad. Like the father said in Ways to Amuse a Dog, dogs get pretty bored just lying around the house all day. That is what Bandit would have to do with Mom and me gone so much.

  Bandit likes to ride. That’s how we got him. He just jumped into Dad’s cab at a truck stop in Nevada and sat there. He had a red bandanna around his neck instead of a collar, so we called him Bandit.

  Sometimes I lie awake at night listening to the gas station ping-pinging and thinking about Dad and Bandit hauling tomatoes or cotton bales on Interstate 5, and I am glad Bandit is there to keep Dad awake. Have you ever seen
Interstate 5? It is straight and boring with nothing much but cotton fields and a big feedlot that you can smell a long way before you come to it. It is so boring that the cattle on the feedlot don’t even bother to moo. They just stand there. They don’t tell you that part in school when they talk about California’s Great Central Valley.

  I’m getting writer’s cramp from all this writing. I’ll get to No. 6 next time. Mom says not to worry about the postage, so I can’t use that as an excuse for not answering.

  Pooped writer,

  Leigh Botts

  November 27

  Mr. Henshaw:

  Here we go again. I’ll never write another list of questions for an author to answer, no matter what the teacher says.

  6. Do you like school?

  School is OK, I guess. That’s where the kids are. The best thing about sixth grade in my new school is that if I hang in, I’ll get out.

  7. Who are your friends?

  I don’t have a whole lot of friends in my new school. Mom says maybe I’m a loner, but I don’t know. A new boy in school has to be pretty cautious until he gets to know who’s who. Maybe I’m just a boy nobody pays much attention to. The only time anybody paid much attention to me was in my last school when I gave the book report on Ways to Amuse a Dog. After my report some people went to the library to get the book. The kids here pay more attention to my lunch than they do to me. They really watch to see what I have in my lunch because Katy gives me such good things.

  I wish somebody would ask me over sometime. After school I stay around kicking a soccer ball with some of the other kids so they won’t think I am stuck up or anything, but nobody asks me over.