Super Duper Pee Wee!

     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

“T
he 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.

“D
o 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.”