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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

To be continued unless we get the TV fixed.

Mr. Henshaw:

If our TV was fixed I would be watching “Highway Patrol,” but it isn’t, so here are some more answers from my stupid brain. (Ha-ha.)