Беверли Клири - Dear Mr. Henshaw / Дорогой мистер Хеншоу. 7-8 классы

© Шитова А. В., адаптация, словарь, 2014

© ООО Антология, 2014

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

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

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 that 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 that city dogs were bored so Joe could not keep the dog unless he could find seven ways to amuse it. I have a black dog. His name is Bandit. He is a nice dog.

If you answer I will 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*.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I am in the fourth grade now. I made a diorama of Ways to Amuse a Dog, the book that 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 write to me in your own handwriting. I am a great lover 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.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I am 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 and say he couldn’t let his dog use the slide? Here grownups, who are mostly really 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?

Enclosure: Picture of me.

(We are studying business letters.)

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.

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 that the boy’s mother tried to find ways to cook the moose meat they had in their freezer. 1000 pounds is a lot of moose. Moose burgers, moose stew and moose meat loaf don’t sound too bad. Maybe moose mincemeat pie would be OK because you wouldn’t know you were eating moose. Creamed moose on toast, yuck.

I don’t think the boy’s father had to shoot the moose, but I guess there are many moose in Alaska, and maybe they needed it for food.

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

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.

1. How many books have you written?

2. Is Boyd Henshaw your real name?

3. Why do you write books for children?

4. Where do you get your ideas?

5. Do you have any kids?

6. What is your favorite book that you wrote?

7. Do you like to write books?

8. What is the title of your next book?

9. What is your favorite animal?

10. Please give me some tips on how to write a book. This is important to me. I really want to know so I can become a famous writer 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!

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

At first I was very upset when I didn’t get an answer to my letter in time for my report, but it was OK because I read what it said about you on the back of Ways to Amuse a Dog. On the book it said you lived in Seattle, so I didn’t know that you moved to Alaska, but I should’ve 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 your silly answers. 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 which 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 that you were serious about them. 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 that you sent for me to answer really made me mad. Nobody else’s author put in a list of questions, 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 was really excited about getting a letter and wrote such a long answer that the boy had to write a long report. He thinks that nobody ever wrote to that author before, and surely he 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 could keep it until Miss Martinez took the letter to the office and made copies of 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.

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 this 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 is better than cutting grass or clearing snow?

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

Mom found your letter and your list of questions which I stupidly left on my desk. We had a big argument. She says that I have to answer your questions because authors are working people like everyone else, and if you found time to answer my questions, I should answer yours. She says that I can’t expect everyone to do everything for me all my life. She said the same thing to Dad when he left his socks on the floor.

Well, I have to go now. It’s bedtime. Maybe I’ll start 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.

P.S. If my Dad was here, he would tell you a thing or two.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

Mom is asking me about your stupid questions. She says that 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 begin is to sit down and answer your questions fully. So here we go.

1. Who are you?

Like I said, I am Leigh Botts. Leigh Marcus Botts. I don’t like my name Leigh because some people don’t know how to say it or think it’s a girl’s name. Mom says that 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 funny. I am just a plain boy. This school doesn’t say that I am “Gifted” or “Talented”, and I don’t like soccer as much as everybody at this school does. I am not stupid either.

2. What do you look like?

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

This is hard work. To be continued, maybe.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I wasn’t going to answer any more of your questions, but Mom won’t fix our broken TV because she says it’s bad for my brain. This is Thanksgiving vacation and I am so bored that I decided to answer a couple of your stupid questions with my stupid brain. (Joke.)

3. What is your family like?

Since Dad and Bandit went away, my family is just Mom and me. Before, we all lived in a mobile home near Bakersfield in California. When Mom and Dad got divorced, they sold the mobile home, and Dad moved into a trailer.

Dad drives a big truck. His cab is over the engine. Some people don’t know that. The truck is why my parents got divorced. Before, Dad worked for someone else, hauling stuff like cotton, sugar beets and other produce around California and Nevada, but he wanted to have his own rig for cross-country hauling. He worked practically night and day and saved some money. Mom said that 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 rig, which truckers call a tractor, but everyone else calls a truck, is surely a beauty with ten wheels and everything, so he can hitch up and haul anything.

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

Mr. Henshaw:

Why should I call you “dear,” when you are the reason I have to do all this work? I can’t leave Mom out so here is Question 3 continued.

Mom works part-time for “Catering by Katy” which is owned by a really nice lady whom Mom knew when she was growing up in Taft, California. Katy says that 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 cheesecakes and apple pies 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 college. She wants to be a licensed nurse. They help real nurses except they don’t stick needles in people. She is almost always home when I get home from school.

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 in California, about twenty miles from the sugar refinery where Dad had hauled sugar beets before he went cross-country. Mom said that all the time she was growing up she wished for a few ocean breezes, and now we’ve got them. We’ve got a lot of fog too, 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. It was somebody’s summer cottage a long time ago before they built a two-story house in front of it. Now it is a garden cottage and it is falling apart, but it is all we have money for. Mom says that at least we have a roof over our heads, and it can’t be hauled away on a truck. I have my own room, but Mom sleeps on a couch in the living room. She decorated the place really nicely 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 mostly I am asleep by then. On our street, besides the thrift shop, there is a pet shop, a sewing machine shop, an electric shop, a couple of antique shops, plus a restaurant and an ice cream place.

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.