by Judy Delton
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Published by
Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway New York,
New York 10036
Text copyright © 1995 by Judy Delton
Illustrations copyright © 1995 by Alan Tiegreen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademarks Yearling® and Dell® are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
eISBN: 978-0-307-83294-8
v3.1
For Olivia, my favorite granddaughter
Contents
Cover
Other Books You Will Enjoy
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1 New Badge News
2 Roger Gets a Girl
3 No Trading Pen Pals
4 From Whole Room to Half a Room
5 Auntie Ree Moves In
6 Pillow Fight
7 Good Detective Work
8 Molly Gets a Letter
9 Grocery Store Stakeout
10 Fate Steps In—and Out
11 Badge Day!
A Letter from Judy Delton
Lisa and Tracy’s Crossword Puzzle
The Pee Wees’ Letters to Their Pen Pals
Roger’s Riddles
Famous Pee Wee Recipes
CHAPTER 1
New Badge News
“The new badge we are going to earn,” said Mrs. Peters, “is one of my favorites! It is the letter-writing badge!”
Mrs. Peters was the Pee Wee Scout leader of Troop 23. The troop met every Tuesday in her basement.
She waited to hear her Pee Wees cheer. She waited until they looked happy about their new badge. But they didn’t. They began to groan.
“It sounds like school to me,” said Molly Duff to her best friend, Mary Beth Kelly. This was the first time Mrs. Peters had let Molly down. All the time she’d been a Pee Wee the badges had been exciting. Like the badge for skiing. Or fishing. Even baseball. Molly had nothing against letter writing—she liked to write to her grandma and her friends who moved away. But badges were for something special.
“It sounds like work, not like fun. Pee Wees are supposed to be fun,” said Tim Noon.
“Just wait till I tell you about it!” said Mrs. Peters. “We are going to have a pen pal club! We will write to a group of children miles away. They live in a town out west called Golden Grove and are Pee Wees too, with a different leader. They are super duper troopers, and they can’t wait to earn this badge along with us and become our new friends. Letter writing is a wonderful way to get to know new people and learn new things.”
The word learn was not a word the Pee Wees wanted to hear. It was too much like studying in school.
“We’ve got friends,” muttered Sonny Stone. Sonny was a mama’s boy. His mom had married the fire chief a while back, and Molly thought he would grow up if he had a dad. But so far he hadn’t.
“Everyone can use more friends,” said Mrs. Peters, frowning. She didn’t look happy about the poor response to her favorite badge.
Rachel Meyers was waving her hand. “I already have a pen pal, Mrs. Peters. She lives in Germany. She sent me her picture.”
You might know Rachel would already have a pen pal, thought Molly. She always knew everything before the other Pee Wees. And her pen pal was not even in this country! She was all the way across the ocean, in Germany!
“Someday I’m going to Germany to visit her,” Rachel went on. “As soon as I can speak German.”
Mrs. Peters’s new badge was not going over big, thought Molly. Some of the Pee Wees were crawling under the table, and some were yawning. This had never happened before! What if the Pee Wees rebelled! Her dad had told her about workers who didn’t like things in the office and went on strike! Were the Pee Wees going to strike?
“That’s very good, Rachel,” said Mrs. Peters above the scuffle. “We won’t have pen pals in Europe, but since you’ve had experience, you can help us with our project.”
Another word like learn. Project. Projects were even more work than learning!
“We are going to learn to write a proper letter and then write to them and wait to hear back. And maybe someday we will even get to meet our pen pals in person.”
Who wanted to meet perfect strangers, thought Molly. Even if you wrote to them, you didn’t really know them. They might be mean and nasty. Maybe they would even be like Roger White. Roger was a Pee Wee Scout, but he could be mean. His pen pal might hate him!
“Do we write just one letter to get our badge?” asked Jody George. Jody was one of Molly’s favorite Scouts. He was in a wheelchair, but he could do almost as many things as the other Pee Wees. Surely he wouldn’t have any trouble writing a letter. You could do that from a wheelchair just fine. Even from a bed.
Jody was friendly and had good parties at his house and a good CD collection. He took lots of trips with his family. And he was smart.
“It’s not the number of letters we write,” Mrs. Peters said with a frown. “It would be nice to write back and forth to them and maybe write a few letters to other people. Maybe one to your grandma if she is out of town and one to an author of your favorite books.”
“My favorite author is dead,” shouted Roger. “He’s Mark Twain.”
“Mine isn’t,” said Molly. “I’m going to write to Judy Delton. She wrote Two Good Friends. My mom used to read it to me when I was real little.”
“I’ve got lots of her books,” said Mary Beth.
“When you write to authors,” said Mrs. Peters, “be sure to enclose a stamped envelope with your address on it, if you want a reply.
“But today,” she went on, trying to get back to her subject, “what we need to do is learn how to write a good letter.”
“Can we write a postcard?” asked Tracy Barnes.
“Can I call my pen pal on the phone, instead of writing?” asked Tim.
“I can fax a letter in my dad’s office,” said Patty Baker.
Molly thought Mrs. Peters looked sad.
“No postcards,” she said firmly. “When you are on a vacation and want to send a picture postcard, that is fine. But we will start with letters. No phone calls. No faxes. We are going to write real old-fashioned letters, with stamps on them, like people used to send before there were shortcuts.”
“That’s called ‘snail mail,’ ” said Lisa Ronning. “It’s really slow.”
“We are not in a hurry,” said Mrs. Peters.
“Can we use a computer?” asked Ashley Baker. “My family does everything on the computer.”
“Everything?” yelled Roger. “Ha, do you eat and sleep on it?”
“Do you bake bread in it?” said Sonny. He and Roger looked at each other and laughed.
Ashley ignored the boys.
�
�A personal letter should be handwritten,” said their leader. “It is a chance to write neatly and in your best writing.”
The Pee Wee Scouts were not crawling under the table now.
And they were not scuffling and talking.
They were not being super duper troopers.
Tim was making snoring noises, and two of the other boys were asleep.
Tracy was doing a crossword puzzle in a book her aunt had given her.
“What is a three-letter word for pine tree?” she whispered to Molly.
Roger was reading his joke book.
Mrs. Peters’s latest project was definitely not off to a good start.
CHAPTER 2
Roger Gets a Girl
“Do you know what?” asked Sonny. “My aunt belongs to a pen pal club. It’s a club where you meet someone to marry. She gets pictures of all these guys and she decides who she likes and writes to them.”
Now everyone was awake.
“Do we have to marry our pen pal?” asked Lisa. “My mom wouldn’t like that.”
Molly did not want to marry a pen pal. She was going to marry Kevin Moe. He was a Pee Wee too. She liked Kevin. He was going to be mayor of their town when he grew up.
“You guys can’t marry your pen pal,” Jody said, laughing, from his wheelchair. “You aren’t even old enough.”
“Jody is right,” said Mrs. Peters, looking impatient. Their leader hardly ever got impatient. “You do not need to marry your pen pal, now or ever.” She glared at Sonny.
“What if we want to write to more than one pen pal?” asked Ashley. “Do we get one badge for every pen pal?”
“Just one badge,” said Mrs. Peters. “And one pen pal. I think most of you will find one correspondent is enough. Plus your grandma or a friend.”
“What’s ‘correspondent’?” whispered Tim to Tracy.
“I think it’s like a secret agent,” she answered. “Or a spy.”
“Hey, I’d like to write to a spy!” said Roger.
“I don’t want to be a spy!” cried Sonny. “Mrs. Peters, do I have to spy?”
“A correspondent isn’t a spy,” scoffed Ashley. “It’s someone you write to.”
Mrs. Peters turned and wrote a sample letter on a green slate. She held it up.
“Up here,” she said, pointing to the right-hand corner of the letter, “you write your own address. And under it, you write the date.”
Mrs. Peters went on, “On the left side, you put the name and address of the person you are writing to.”
“I don’t do all that stuff when I write to my grandma,” said Patty Baker, who was Kenny’s twin. “I just say ‘Dear Grandma’ right away.”
“That’s fine,” said their leader. “But we want to learn the right way. We do not know our pen pals like we know our grandmas.”
“That is a business-letter form,” said Ashley.
“Now,” Mrs. Peters said, “we start our letter right here at the left margin. We write ‘Dear Grandma’ or ‘Dear Ronald,’ and then we indent and begin what we want to say.”
“What’s ‘indent’?” shouted Sonny.
“It’s when you make something new, like indenting the telephone,” said Tim.
The Pee Wees burst into laughter.
“That’s ‘invent,’ dummy,” said Roger.
Mrs. Peters held up her hand for silence. “You go in three spaces to start your news, just like you do when you write a story in school.”
She pointed to the letter.
It was indented.
It said,
Dear Grandma,
How are you? I hope you are having good weather. I hope you come and see us soon. How is grandpa?
Love, Jane.
“Who is Jane?” shouted Tim.
“She’s a made-up person,” said Ashley in disgust. “This is a sample letter.”
“It’s boring,” said Lisa. “I wouldn’t write such a boring letter as that.”
Mrs. Peters laughed.
“You’re right,” she said. “It is up to you all to write much more interesting letters! Letters that tell what you are doing and what you think about and how you feel about things.”
Molly began to get excited. She liked to write stories. And she liked new friends. This would be both of those things.
Mrs. Peters talked about nice handwriting.
She talked about no holes in the paper from erasing.
She talked about clear addresses on envelopes that the mail carriers could read with or without their glasses.
And then she held up a basket.
“In this basket are names and addresses of our pen pals. Each one of you will draw a name. He or she will be your new pen pal and friend.”
The Pee Wees drew names one at a time.
“Hey, mine’s a girl!” said Roger. “I don’t want to write to a girl!”
“We are all people, Roger,” said their leader. “These Scouts are all people and have many of the same interests and hobbies as you do. You will find things you have in common when you write to them.”
“I’m sorry for that poor girl who has Roger for a pen pal,” said Rachel.
Molly hoped she had drawn a girl’s name. Mrs. Peters said boys and girls were both people, but sometimes Roger and Sonny acted like the girls weren’t quite there. Like perhaps the boys had a little more growing up to do first.
Molly put her new pen pal’s name in her pocket. She would wait till she was in her room at home to see who it was. She liked to do things like this alone in the privacy of her room, not in front of everyone.
The Pee Wees told good deeds they’d done and sang their song and said their pledge. Then the meeting was over, and Molly ran ahead of the others on the way home. She had the name of her pen pal in her pocket. What if that pen pal was a boy? Or rather, what if he was a boy like Roger?
CHAPTER 3
No Trading
Pen Pals
“What’s new at Scouts?” called Molly’s dad as she rushed through the house to her room.
“We’re getting another badge,” she called from the stairs.
In her room Molly sat on the edge of her bed, even though her mother said it would ruin the mattress. She opened the little folded piece of paper she’d drawn out of the basket. Her pen pal’s name and address were typed. Some of the letters were written over as if mistakes had been made. But the name looked clear. It said, “Lyle Kester, 62 South Main Street.” Her pen pal was a boy.
“Rat’s knees!” said Molly. She stood up and stamped her foot on the floor so hard her dad called up to her, “Don’t knock the house down, Molly!”
“My pen pal is a boy,” she called down to her dad from the top of the stairs.
She walked down the steps and told her dad about the badge. “I don’t want to write to a boy,” she said sadly.
“What’s the matter with a boy?” asked her dad. “I’m a boy, and you like me!”
Molly laughed. “You’re not a boy,” she said. “You’re a man.”
Her dad looked at the slip of paper in Molly’s hand.
“Well, I was a boy once,” he said. “And Lyle will be a man like me someday.”
Molly frowned. “He might not be like you,” she said. “He might be like Roger.”
“Horrors!” said Mr. Duff, pretending to be shocked.
But he did have to admit it was true. He could be like Roger. No one knew yet what kind of a boy Lyle was. “It’s a fifty-fifty chance you have,” he said. “Roger or me.”
Molly’s mother came home and heard the story.
“I’m sure Lyle will be a very nice boy,” she said.
Molly wanted to believe her, but after all, she didn’t know any more about Lyle than Molly did.
After supper Molly fed her dog, Skippy, and went up to her room to write a letter. After the meeting she couldn’t wait to write to her pen pal. She wanted to be the first one to write and the first one to get an answer. But now she wasn’t as eager.
Th
e phone rang. It was Mary Beth. She said, “My pen pal’s name is Shari, with an i.”
Mary Beth’s pen pal was definitely a girl. Mary Beth was always lucky.
“Rachel got someone named Heather. And Ashley got a boy!”
“So did I,” said Molly.
Mary Beth didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “I wouldn’t mind having a boy to write to. I mean, it could be kind of romantic. Or else it could be like having a brother or a cousin.”
The cousin or brother sounded okay. But Molly scoffed at romantic. “I’m going to marry Kevin. Or maybe Jody.”
“You never know,” said Mary Beth. “My brother’s friend married a girl he wrote to when he was in the army.”
Molly sighed. This wasn’t solving the pen pal problem.
Then she thought of something. “Let’s trade,” she said. “I’ll trade you Lyle for Shari.”
Mary Beth was quiet again. She’s thinking of an excuse, thought Molly.
“I would, but I don’t think Mrs. Peters would like it,” said Mary Beth.
“Pooh, she wouldn’t even know,” said Molly.
“Still, I think it’s against the rules.”
“What rules?” asked Molly.
“Pee Wee rules,” said Mary Beth.
Molly had never heard of a Scout rule that said you could not exchange pen pals. Come to think about it, she had never heard of any Pee Wee rules, period.
“It would be kind of like cheating,” said Mary Beth. “I mean, that’s the point of drawing a name. The name we draw is the one we are supposed to write to.”
Mary Beth changed the subject and began to talk about a party her sister was having.
After Molly hung up, Tracy called to talk about pen pals. Hers was a girl.
“I’m glad I didn’t get a boy,” she said. “I mean, I like boys and everything, but what if he was like Roger?”
“I know,” said Molly.
She hung up and hoped no one else would call her. She sat at her desk and took out a piece of paper with a big M on it. The M had flowers winding through it and down the side of the paper. What would Lyle’s paper have on it? she wondered. It wouldn’t have flowers crawling around a big L, she knew. In fact, it wouldn’t even have an L on it. If it had anything, it would have a spaceship or race car. And if he was like Roger, he’d probably write on an old candy wrapper or a paper towel.
