Karen's Chain Letter

by Ann M. Martin

  Ms. Colman had brought in some push pins with brightly colored tops. “Karen,” she said, “would you like to come up front and stick the pins into the right states on the map?”

  “Sure,” I said. I am excellent at geography.

  After I took my turn, Ms. Colman gave some other kids turns. When we were finished, pins were sticking out every which way on our map.

  “It looks like a porcupine,” I said. Everybody laughed.

  All day long, my friends and I talked about which postcards we were planning to answer. We could not stay away from the basket. Hannie, Nancy, and I kept reading the postcards in it.

  “What about this one?” I asked. I picked up a colorful card. It was from a girl who lived on a Christmas tree farm in Vermont.

  “I think she sounds extremely interesting,” I said. “I will write to her.”

  “What if I want to write her?” said Pamela. “You cannot answer every postcard,” she said. “Honestly. You are already writing too many. This is a class project. Remember?”

  I was not too bothered by Pamela, though. I was having fun thinking about the postcards and the kids who had written them. Hmm. That gave me an idea. Maybe everyone in my class would forget about stamps for awhile. Maybe that would give me time to work on my collection and make it better. After all, postcards were fun, but I still needed stamps.

  “Hey, here is a good postcard,” I said. “It is from a boy who likes to collect butterflies.”

  “Really?” said Nancy. “Let me see.”

  I could not wait until Postcard Day. And now there was only one more day to go.

  Postcard Day

  On Postcard Day I woke up bright and early. I gobbled my breakfast, then grabbed my backpack to run to the bus. Elizabeth looked at the clock.

  “You are a little early today,” she said. “The bus will not be here for another fifteen minutes.”

  “That is okay,” I said.

  I was very excited. The night before, I had counted up the number of kids I wanted to write to. I had a full day ahead of me.

  Postcard Day started out being lots of fun. We spent all morning writing our letters. Some kids even decorated theirs.

  “Look,” said Hannie. “I drew a giraffe on this one.”

  “That is very nice,” I said, “but please do not talk to me while I am writing. I have a lot of cards to answer. And I want to make sure I have time to finish my letters.”

  By lunchtime I had written a nice stack. I still had plenty more to do, but Ms. Colman told us to put our work away.

  “And when you come back from lunch,” she said, “I will hand out some math worksheets. We will spend the afternoon working on those.”

  What? I waved my hand until Ms. Colman called on me. “I thought this was Postcard Day,” I said. “What if we have not finished our letters?”

  “I did not mean for Postcard Day to be the whole day,” replied Ms. Colman. “I think most of your classmates have finished writing their letters by now.”

  “But I have not.”

  “Is it possible for you to finish them at home?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But what about all the postcards that we have not answered yet?”

  “I never expected we would have time to answer them all,” said Ms. Colman. “After all, we have over a hundred cards here.”

  Oh no. This was very bad news.

  “I guess you misunderstood, Karen,” she said. “I am afraid that this afternoon we need to devote some time to our regular work.”

  Boo and bullfrogs. Another misunderstanding. I put away my letters and followed my class to the lunchroom. I was certainly getting very good at misunderstandings. It seemed as if I were becoming an expert.

  Hannie walked alongside me. She could tell I was not happy.

  “Are you upset?” she asked.

  “Well, of course I am,” I said. “Lots of kids wrote to us. They expected answers. The ones who do not hear from us will be disappointed.”

  “The kids who wrote to us were answering a chain letter,” said Hannie. “They will not feel bad. They could not be sure that anyone would answer.”

  That might be true. Still. “I know I would want an answer if I had asked for one,” I said.

  That afternoon, we worked on our math. It was hard for me to concentrate. I stared at the basket. Lots of cards were still inside. Cards that would not be answered.

  How had this happened? How had everything gone so wrong? From the start, the chain letter had been nothing but trouble. First Ms. Colman and my father had gotten angry at me. Then I had gotten into one squabble after another with my classmates. About stamps. Stamps! And now I was disappointing a whole bunch of other kids, kids I had never even met. What a mess.

  “Karen,” said Ms. Colman. She had noticed me staring at the basket. “Do you need some help with your math?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. I chewed on my pencil and tried harder to concentrate.

  Soon it was time to go home. I put on my sweatshirt and zipped it up. On my way out the door, I stopped at the basket and pulled out a card. It was from a girl who said she was an only child. “How many people do you have in your family?” she had asked.

  Now there was a question. It would take me all day to write a letter answering that.

  Hank and Bobby walked past me.

  “I will trade you this card for that one,” said Hank to Bobby.

  Stamps again. Hannie tugged at my sleeve.

  “Come on,” she said. “We do not want to miss the bus.”

  I dropped the postcard back in the basket and followed my friend out the door.

  Surfing the Net

  On the way home, I did not feel much like talking. Hannie did, though.

  “I have to figure out a way to get more stamps,” she said. “I think my collection is the worst in the class.”

  “Mine is the next worst,” I said.

  “There must be something we can do.”

  “No,” I said. “I have tried everything. I have asked every person in my family for stamps. I have gone through every old letter I have ever saved. I have written to everyone I know. Nothing is working.”

  “I’m sure there’s something we have not thought of,” said Hannie. She drummed her fingers on the seat in front of us. “I know!” she cried.

  “What?”

  “We can look on the computer. Maybe there is a Web site about stamp collecting. Maybe it would tell us how we could get more stamps.”

  Well, that was not exactly a way to get stamps. But it was a way to get more ideas.

  “When the bus lets us off, I will come to your house,” said Hannie. “We will surf the Net.”

  Hannie held out her arms as if she were balancing on a board. “Surf’s up,” she said with a grin.

  At my house, we asked Nannie if we could use the computer. She sat with us while we worked on-line. We did find a Web site about stamp collecting. Not only that, it was a special Web site just for kids. At the site was a bulletin board where kids could write messages. We read some of them. Hannie looked disappointed.

  “These kids all seem to have lots of stamps already,” she said. “Nobody seems to have any ideas about how to get more.”

  I leaned forward and scrolled down the screen. “No,” I said. “But there are plenty of kids with lots of things to say.”

  Hannie placed her fingers on the keyboard.

  Help! she typed. I am stranded on a desert island. Send stamps!

  “If only it was this easy to get mail,” she said.

  “Wait!” I cried. “It is this easy to get mail. Not mail mail, but electronic mail.”

  “What good does that do us? There are no stamps on electronic mail.”

  “Who cares about stamps?” I said. “Don’t you see? This would be the perfect way to answer all the postcards that are still sitting in the basket at school. Our class could start a Web site. It could have a mailbox. That way, we could write back and forth to our new pen pals all the
time. It would be fast and easy.”

  “I was hoping for more stamps,” said Hannie.

  “Not me,” I declared. “I do not care if I never see another stamp as long as I live.”

  I closed up the computer and shut it off.

  I could not wait for school the next day. I could not wait to tell my great idea to the class.

  A New Project

  I love to start the day with something important to announce to the class. The next morning at school Ms. Colman noticed that I was a little fidgety during attendance.

  “Karen,” she said, “you look as if there is something you want to share with the class.”

  “There is,” I said. “I figured out how we can answer all the postcards that are left in the basket.”

  “Oh,” said Ms. Colman. “Karen, I thought I made it clear that we would not be able to do that.”

  “We could start a Web site,” I said quickly. I knew Ms. Colman would love my idea once she heard it.

  “A Web site,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” I said. “It could be a new club. I even have a name for it, the Postcard Club. But it will not be a regular club. It will be on the Internet. And any kid who wants to can write to us there.”

  No one in my class said a word. Maybe they had not understood me.

  “Okay,” I said. Someone needed to start the ball rolling. “What we need to do is write a letter. We can print out lots of copies and send it out to all the kids who wrote postcards to us.”

  Ms. Colman laughed. “I think you are getting a little ahead of us here, Karen,” she said. “This is a big project, one we need to talk about first. Does anyone have any questions?”

  “I do,” said Natalie. “How can other kids write to us on a Web site?”

  “It will have a mailbox,” I explained. “Kids can leave messages there, and we can read them and send messages back.”

  “But what would the rest of the Web site be?” asked Ricky.

  “That is a good question,” said Ms. Colman. She took out a large sheet of paper and a Magic Marker. “What information would you like to have on a Web site?”

  “Information about our class,” said Nancy. “So other kids could get to know us.”

  “Good idea,” said Ms. Colman.

  At the top of the page she wrote a heading. Our Web site, it said.

  “And what information would you like to include?” she asked.

  “Our grade,” said Natalie.

  “Our pets,” said Ricky.

  “Our favorite books,” said Sara.

  “Our hobbies,” said Bobby.

  Hobbies? I knew what that meant. I groaned.

  “Anything else?” asked Ms. Colman.

  Hannie raised her hand. “What stamps we need,” she said.

  Even I had to laugh at that.

  Soon we had a long list of information we wanted to include. Ms. Colman read it out loud.

  “This will be a good project for us,” she said. “But before we begin, I need to do a little investigating myself. I need to find out if it is possible for us to set up a Web site, and how we would go about doing that.”

  “You could ask Mr. Baker,” suggested Nancy. Mr. Baker is one of the teachers in our school. He knows all about computers.

  “That would be a smart place to start,” said Ms. Colman. “Maybe he could help us set up the Web site himself. Now,” she said, “we need to get on with the work we have scheduled for today.”

  “Excuse me!” I raised my hand. “We still need to write the letter,” I reminded her. “The one announcing the club.”

  Ms. Colman glanced at the clock. “Karen,” she said thoughtfully, “would you like to write a draft of the letter yourself? You could bring it into class tomorrow, and then we could make time to work on it together.”

  “Yes,” I said. I am very good at writing letters. Ms. Colman had picked the perfect person for the job.

  The Postcard Club

  At last our Web site was ready. Mr. Baker knew all about Web sites. He helped Ms. Colman set up ours. The Postcard Club had lots of information about our class. We even decided to write poems and include them. I wrote a funny poem about my brother Andrew.

  The class liked the form letter I brought in. That is, they liked most of it. Ms. Colman was not so sure about one part, the part where I pointed out that the Web site was my idea. “Do you think it is necessary to say that, Karen?” she asked.

  “I do,” I said. “Because it shows that kids can have ideas. I had an idea, I told it to you, and you helped us turn it into a class project. Now everyone who reads the letter will know how special our class is.”

  Ms. Colman laughed. “All right,” she said. “You win. Overall, you have done a very good and thorough job.”

  That afternoon, we mailed the letter. We sent a copy to every single kid who had sent us a postcard with his or her address. Our letter told our new friends how to find our Web site. And it told them they could contact us by sending electronic mail to our mailbox. Now all we had to do was sit back and wait for the messages to pour in.

  I knew it would take time for our letter to reach our new pen pals. So I knew there would not be any notes on our Web site yet. Still, I checked every day. But by the end of that week, we had not received any mail. Luckily, I could use our home computer to check the mailbox on our Web site. Nope. No messages yet. I reread the poem I had written.

  MY BROTHER ANDREW

  by Karen B.

  Andrew is my little brother.

  He is simply like no other!

  He collects big trucks with cranes,

  Racing cars and planes and trains.

  Sometimes he puts bugs in jars.

  I think he is quite bizarre!

  Still, I love to play with him,

  Bike and skate and sled and swim.

  Did I say he moved away?

  Andrew, please come back to play!

  No doubt about it, my poem was the best in the class. I hoped my classmates would not be upset if all our new pen pals addressed their messages specifically to me.

  On Monday morning, first thing, I asked Ms. Colman if I could go to our Web site and check our mailbox. She said that we needed to do some things before that. First we had to take attendance. Bor-ing. Then we had to show her the books we had chosen for independent reading. Then we had to start reading one of them. Usually I love to read. But that day, I just sat there staring at the same blurry page. Ms. Colman walked past me and noticed.

  “All right, Karen,” she said. “Maybe it is time to visit our Web site and check our mail.”

  Hurray! Bing. I turned on the computer. Click. I opened our mailbox.

  Oh, goody, there were messages. “Mail!” I cried out. Everyone gathered around to see.

  One thing surprised me. None of the messages mentioned me specifically. Oh well. What they did mention — every single message — was stamp collecting. That is because most of the kids in our class had listed it as their hobby.

  One of the messages asked about the best way to remove stamps from envelopes.

  Nancy pushed her way closer to the computer. “I will answer that one,” she volunteered.

  Another message was from a kid who said that she had bought some stamp trading cards at the post office.

  “Wow,” said Hank. “I want to talk to her.”

  We were very busy answering our mail. I did not even mind that all the kids who wrote were writing messages about stamp collecting. After all, it was fun to read mail from so many kids.

  A Brand-new Pen Pal

  And that is how our class started the Postcard Club. After that, we spent some time every day answering our mail. Our class is always very, very busy.

  One day I was sitting next to Hannie again, during silent reading time. We were sunk into the big, fluffy pillows. Hannie nudged me. “I wish I had a teapot dress like that,” she said. “She really does have the coolest clothes.”

  I looked up. There was Ms. Agna again. I w
as surprised to see her. Postcards had stopped pouring in for me, and she had not visited our room in more than a week. I figured that by now I had received all the postcards I was going to get.

  This time, Ms. Agna did not have a big bag of cards. She had only one. She smiled at me from across the room and handed the card to Ms. Colman.

  “Well,” said Ms. Colman as she looked it over, “this is quite exciting. Karen, please come up and show the class the card you received. We will have to add a new push pin to our map. In fact, we will have to add a whole new section to our map.”

  Ms. Colman handed me the card. Oh, my goodness, the card had come all the way from Australia! That must be why it had taken so long to arrive. I read it aloud to the class.

  Hi, it said. I am writing from Sydney, which is the largest city in Australia. I have lots of hobbies, but my favorite is the computer. Please write back. Your friend, Alexander McCully.

  “What does the stamp look like?” asked Pamela.

  Uh-oh. The stamp. I wondered if Ms. Colman would let me keep it. It was not a kangaroo stamp, but it was very cool. I certainly did not want to give it to Pamela. Ms. Colman must have guessed what I was thinking.

  “It is very special to receive mail all the way from Australia,” she said. “So special that, this time, Karen, I think you may keep the stamp as well as the postcard.” Phew! “And you ought to mail Alexander one of our letters announcing the Postcard Club,” Ms. Colman continued. “If his hobby is computers, he is probably on-line.”

  Yippee! At last it was my lucky day. At last I had the good luck I had been waiting for all along.

  “Pass the postcard around,” said Nancy.

  “Okay,” I said. “But please do not smudge the stamp.”

  A stamp from Australia. I would have to make a beautiful new page in my album for that. But even more important, I could not wait to write to Alexander. I had so many questions to ask. Were there kangaroos in Sydney? What was the weather like in Australia?