The author gratefully acknowledges
Jan Carr
for her help
with this book.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
1 A New Hobby
2 Two Great Families
3 The Chain Letter
4 The Three Musketeers
5 A New Address
6 Hannie’s Mistake
7 Show-and-Share
8 Waiting for Mail
9 Bales of Mail
10 Trouble
11 More Mail
12 Rotten Luck
13 Stamp Champ
14 Stamp Stampede
15 Cards in a Basket
16 Postcard Day
17 Surfing the Net
18 A New Project
19 The Postcard Club
20 A Brand-new Pen Pal
About the Author
Also Available
Copyright
A New Hobby
“Hello, Mr. Venta!” I called. “Is there any mail for me?”
Mr. Venta is our mail carrier. He and I are very good friends. Every day last month, I met him at the end of our driveway. He would hand the mail right to me. But now it was September and I had gone back to school so I did not see Mr. Venta every day. But that day I was lucky. When I got home from school, the mail had not arrived yet. So I watched for Mr. Venta’s truck. When I saw it, I ran to meet him.
“I am sorry I am so late today, Karen,” he said. He handed me a big stack of mail. None of the envelopes was addressed to me, but some had very pretty stamps on them.
“Any good ones?” asked Mr. Venta. I had told him all about my new hobby.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
In case you have not guessed, my new hobby was stamp collecting. So far, I had collected stamps with birds on them and stamps with flowers and even stamps with dinosaurs. I had made a special album to keep them in. I had decorated each page with very beautiful pictures. I could not wait to glue these new stamps in. I waved good-bye to Mr. Venta and ran into the house with the mail. Snip, snip. I had to cut off the stamps very carefully.
“Karen,” said a voice. Uh-oh. It was my daddy. He sounded a little angry. “What are you doing?”
“I am being very careful,” I replied. “See? I did not ruin the envelope or the letter inside.”
Daddy took the envelope from me.
“This is business mail,” he said. “You need to give it to me before you cut it up. I will give you the envelope when I finish with it. Remember? That is what we agreed.”
“Oh,” I said. Actually, I did not really remember any such thing. Sometimes it is easy for me to forget. Especially when I am working on an exciting new hobby.
Kristy came home then. She is my stepsister. “Is that the mail?” she asked. She picked up the stack and sorted through it. “A letter from Michel!” she cried.
Michel lives in Toronto. He is Kristy’s new friend, and he writes her all the time. This is lucky for me, because Toronto is in Canada, which is a whole different country. So Michel’s letters always have Canadian stamps on them. Kristy tore open the envelope and turned toward the door.
“Hey,” I cried. “Can I have the stamp?”
“Later,” said Kristy.
“Please?” I begged.
Kristy sighed. “All right.” She tore off the stamp and handed it to me. “Did you get any mail from Chicago?” she asked.
“Not today,” I said.
“Maybe tomorrow, then. I bet Andrew will draw you a picture and send it. You know he misses you.”
Andrew is my little brother. He and my mother and my stepfather, Seth, were living in Chicago for a few months. Usually, Andrew and I switch houses together every month. One month we live with Mommy’s family at the little house, and the next month we live with Daddy’s family at the big house. But these months were different. Andrew had gone to Chicago, and I had decided to stay with my big-house family here in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. My little-house family would not return to Stoneybrook for two more months.
Oops. Maybe you do not know anything about my two families or my two houses. Do not worry. I will tell you all about them. There is so much to tell!
Two Great Families
Let me start at the beginning. My name is Karen Brewer. I have blonde hair and blue eyes and freckles. I wear glasses. I have a blue pair for reading and a pink pair for the rest of the time. They make me look very grown-up. I am in second grade and I live with my two families in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.
I did not always have two families. A long time ago, Andrew and Mommy and Daddy and I all lived together in the big house. At first Mommy and Daddy were happy, but then they started to fight a lot. And one day they told us they were going to get a divorce. Daddy stayed in the big house, which is the house he grew up in. And Mommy moved to a little house that was not too far away.
After awhile, Mommy met a man named Seth and they got married. Seth is my stepfather. He is gigundoly nice. He has a dog named Midgie and a cat named Rocky, and now they live in the little house too. So do Emily Junior, my pet rat, and Bob, Andrew’s hermit crab. (Actually, Emily Junior and Bob go wherever we go.)
Now I will tell you about the big house. Daddy got married again too. He married a really nice woman named Elizabeth, who is my stepmother. She already had four children. So now I have three stepbrothers and a stepsister. Sam and Charlie are the oldest. They are cool high school guys. Then there is Kristy. She is thirteen and the best stepsister ever. David Michael is seven, like me, but he goes to a different school.
And those are not the only people in the big house. I have one more sister, Emily Michelle. Daddy and Elizabeth adopted her from a faraway country called Vietnam. And finally there is Nannie. She is Elizabeth’s mother. She came to live with us so she could help take care of Emily Michelle, which is a big job because Emily Michelle gets into everything. (She is only two and a half.)
Now I will tell you about the big-house pets. Right now we have two dogs. David Michael has a Bernese mountain dog puppy named Shannon, and Kristy is helping to train a Labrador puppy named Scout. She is going to be a guide dog for the blind! We also have a cat, Daddy’s old cat Boo-Boo, and two goldfish. I have one named Crystal Light the Second and Andrew has one he named … guess what? Goldfishie.
“Do you miss them?” asked Kristy.
“The goldfish?” I asked. “Why would I miss them? They are here.”
Kristy looked confused. Oops. I guess she was not talking about my goldfish. That’s right. We were talking about my little-house family.
“I miss them a lot,” I said.
Then I looked at the stamp Kristy had given me. Wow! Not only was it from Canada, it was a stamp of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Dingdong. Someone had rung the door-bell. I ran to answer it. It was Mr. Venta.
“Hi, Karen,” he said. “I found another letter for you at the bottom of my bag. It must have gotten separated from your pack.”
I looked at the letter. It was from Chicago. And it was addressed to me! I tore open the envelope. Inside was a picture Andrew had drawn (Kristy was right), and a note from Mommy. Something fell out of the note and fluttered to the floor. Stamps!
I saved these stamps for you, Mommy wrote. I hope you like them. I miss you, honey. We cannot wait to see you when we get back in November.
I could not wait to see Mommy and Seth and Andrew. I really missed them too.
I picked up the stamps off the floor. Wow! One had a picture of a carousel horse on it, and another had a picture of an opera singer.
“Thanks, Mr. Venta,” I said. I held my hand high and slapped him five. “And if you happen to find any stamps loose at the bottom of
your bag, you can bring them to me. I know just what to do with them.”
The Chain Letter
When you are a stamp collector, you think about the stamps you have. You also think about how you can get more stamps. Every day you hope that someone will send you some really good stamps in the mail.
The next day in school I was thinking about my collection. I was thinking it would be great if someone would send me a letter from Australia. Then I would have a stamp from all the way around the world. I figured that an Australian stamp would probably have a kangaroo on it. I imagined how it would look in my album.
“Karen?” said Ms. Colman. Ms. Colman is my teacher. She was standing over me. She was staring at me, as if she expected me to say something.
“Yes?” I said.
“I just asked you a question.”
“Oh.” This was embarrassing. “I guess I did not hear you.”
Ms. Colman laughed. She is a gigundoly nice teacher. I think she must be the best teacher in the entire world.
“You did look deep in thought,” she said. “May I ask what you were thinking about?”
“Stamps,” I replied.
“Stamps?”
“Yes. I am a stamp collector now. That is my new hobby.”
“How interesting,” said Ms. Colman. “Maybe you could bring in your collection to show the class.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe next week.”
If I was going to show my stamp album to the class, I would need to fix it up so it would be perfect. It would be nice to add a few more really special stamps. Maybe some from overseas. There was only one problem. How was I going to come up with better stamps so quickly?
At home that afternoon, I found a big surprise. Mr. Venta had already delivered the mail. On the top of the pile was another letter for me. The envelope had a regular old flag stamp. Boo. I already had plenty of those. But the letter was from Maxie, my pen pal in New York City. I ran to my room to read the letter. It was a chain letter! I had heard of chain letters, but I had never gotten one before.
Dear Karen, I read. This is a good-luck chain letter. I got it from someone who got it from someone at Kidsnetwork. (That is a group that plans fun and safe activities for kids.) If you follow the directions and send this letter to other kids within three days, your luck will get better and better.
Well. Usually I have very good luck. But a person can always use more. To get more stamps, for one thing.
I continued reading the letter. It spelled out all the things I needed to do. It told me to retype the letter, add my name and address to a small list of names at the bottom, and remove the name and address at the top of the list. Then I was supposed to send the letter to ten other kids. I knew right away who two of them would be. I would send one letter each to Hannie and Nancy. They are my absolute best friends. Then, after I sent out the letters, I should mail a postcard to the person whose name had been at the top of the list. The letter promised that if I did, I would receive postcards in the mail too. Lots of them.
Postcards? That could only mean one thing — more stamps! My luck was improving already. This was going to be fun.
“Hey,” said Kristy. She poked her head around the door of my room. She was zipping up her sweatshirt. “I am going to go into town with Charlie,” she said. “Do you want to come?”
“Sure,” I answered. I jumped off my bed. “I have to buy something.”
“What?”
“A postcard.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Kristy. “What for?”
“It’s a secret,” I said mysteriously.
Soon lots of postcards addressed to me would start arriving in our mail. Then I would tell Kristy everything. She would be very surprised!
The Three Musketeers
The next day at recess I told Hannie and Nancy about the chain letter.
“I already bought the postcard I will send,” I said. “It is a beautiful picture of the Stoneybrook Arboretum.”
“Did you send out the letters to the ten people yet?” Nancy asked.
“No,” I said. “I will do that this afternoon, after school.”
“Are you going to send one to me?” she asked.
“And me?” Hannie chimed in.
“Well, of course I will. You are my best friends. We are the Three Musketeers.”
We linked our pinkies and squeezed them tightly.
“And anyway,” I told my friends, “I want you both to have good luck. Just like me.”
“Then I will ask my mom’s permission right after school,” said Nancy.
“Me too,” said Hannie.
“Permission?” I said. “For what?”
“To answer the chain letter,” said Nancy.
I had not thought of that. I had not asked anyone’s permission, but I was sure Daddy would think it was okay. After all, Maxie said the letter came from Kidsnetwork.
I pulled a small bag out of my pocket.
“And now,” I said, “I will show you some of the new stamps I have collected.”
I laid the stamps out neatly in a row so Hannie and Nancy could see them. Some other kids gathered around. Addie Sidney came, and so did Pamela Harding. Soon the whole class was bunched around me. Everyone wanted to see the stamps.
“Where did they all come from?” asked Nancy. She seemed especially impressed.
“Different places,” I said. “Nannie has a chocolate business, and a lot of her orders come by mail. Nannie and Daddy get tons of important mail. And Kristy has friends she writes to in England and Canada. And college brochures come for Charlie. Plus Mommy and Seth and Andrew send me mail from Chicago.”
“All right, all right,” Pamela cut me off. “We get the picture.”
I made a face at Pamela. I think I forgot to tell you that Pamela is my best enemy. Sometimes she can be a real meanie-mo.
Nancy picked up one of the stamps and looked at it more closely. “I never knew that stamps could be so cool,” she said.
Just then, the bell rang and everyone started lining up to file back into school. Recess was over.
“Musketeers,” I whispered to Hannie and Nancy as we crowded into line, “do not forget to watch for your mail.”
Inside the classroom, I took my seat and looked at the clock. I wished the school day would go faster. Time was ticking. I wanted to be at home, retyping the chain letter. I had only two days left to send it out.
A New Address
I did not realize how long it would take to type a whole letter. After school, I hurried to eat the snack Nannie had fixed (it was Rice Krispies treats). Then I went straight to our family computer and turned it on. I typed the whole letter. At the end, I added my own name and address. Then I printed out ten copies. Now all I needed were some envelopes and stamps. I went to Daddy’s office and knocked on his door. He always lets me use his supplies.
“What do you need, pumpkin?” Daddy asked.
“Just some envelopes and stamps, please.”
“How many?” he asked. He pulled a pack of envelopes out of the drawer.
“Ten,” I said.
“Ten?” said Daddy. “What in the world are you mailing?”
“My chain letter,” I replied. I handed him a copy. I was sure Daddy would think it was cool. Sometimes, though, Daddy surprises me. As he read the letter, his face grew very serious.
“I am sorry, Karen,” he said when he finished, “but I cannot let you send this out.” He handed the letter back to me.
“What?” I cried. “Why not?” Maybe there was something he did not understand.
“First of all,” said Daddy, “it is against the law to send some chain letters through the mail. The post office keeps track of these things. If you send a chain letter that tells people to send money, you can be arrested.”
Arrested! I had no idea that something that was as much fun as a chain letter could be so much trouble.
“But my letter does not ask people to send money,” I said. “Look. It says to send a postc
ard.”
“Well, there is another problem,” said Daddy. “I do not want you sending your name and address to strangers.”
“I am not sending it to strangers,” I said patiently. “I am sending it to Hannie and Nancy and other people I know. All my friends already know my name and address.”
“Yes, but Hannie and Nancy will send the letter out to others, and then those people will send it out too, and soon it will be going to people we have never heard of. In the end, we have no control over where this letter will go.”
It seemed to me that that was the fun part. How else was I going to get a postcard from Australia?
“Daddy,” I said, “this chain letter comes from Kidsnetwork. It will only be sent to other kids.”
“I am sorry, Karen,” said Daddy. “The answer is no. If it were part of a school project, I would feel different. But you will have to go along with me on this. I am your father and it is my job to look out for your safety.”
Daddy turned back to his work. I could not believe this had happened. This was a problem. A big problem. But the good thing about problems is that they usually have solutions. If you think hard enough, you can figure them out.
Daddy had said that if the letter were part of a school project, he would feel different. That gave me an idea. If he did not want me to send out my home address, maybe I could send out the school’s address. That was it! Perfect. I sat down at the computer again. I took my street address off the bottom of the letter. In its place, I typed, Karen Brewer, c/o Ms. Colman’s class, Stoneybrook Academy. I crumpled up the old letters and printed out ten copies of the new one.
Now all I had to do was mail them. I found some stamps in a drawer in the kitchen. There were only eight, but I did not want to bother Daddy again. He seemed to be in a very cranky mood. I thought of a solution to that problem too, thought. The next day at school I could hand Hannie and Nancy their letters in person.
“Congratulations, Karen Brewer,” I said to myself.
I had solved all of my problems. Daddy always tells me to use my noodle. I was sure that if he knew how many problem I had solved, he would be very proud of my noodle indeed.