What You Wish For by Book Wish Foundation

Author:Book Wish Foundation
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

The drawing was a self-portrait—more beautiful by far than any photograph could have been.

*The author is deeply indebted to Iram Qureshi and Anwar Iqbal for their Urdu translation.

Classrooms are open to sandstorms and deteriorate from seasonal rain.

Photo Credit (both): UNHCR / H. Caux

ANN M. MARTIN

THE LOST ART OF LETTER WRITING

September 14

Dear Jenny,

Hi. My name is Alice Kendall and I’m writing to you because my teacher is weird. Mr. Jessop has only been my teacher for a week and a half and already he’s told my class that 1) computers are turning teenagers into couch potatoes who lack social graces, 2) thanks to e-mail, letter writing is becoming a lost art, and 3) Velcro is the reason children can’t tie their shoes. I didn’t know the Velcro thing was a problem, but whatever. Anyway, getting back to letter writing, that’s why I’m writing to you now. Apparently, my teacher knows your teacher, and Mr. Jessop decided that my classmates and I should practice the art of letter writing—on you and your classmates. (Sorry about that.)

So . . . I don’t know. Did your teacher tell you the same thing? That it would be all tragic if you didn’t know how to write real letters? There were tears in Mr. Jessop’s eyes when he said that letter writing is becoming a lost art. Well, okay, I’m exaggerating, but he did have to stop and clear his throat in the middle of the sentence, like, “Blah, blah, blah, and because everyone communicates via e-mail these days, letter writing is becoming,” ahem, AHEM, “a lost art.”

After that, Mr. Jessop passed around a hat and I drew your name out of it. Jennifer Harris. You are now officially my pen pal. Which means that you should know a few things about me. I’m in eighth grade. I go to Wentworth Academy in Newtown, Connecticut, but I live in Burton, which is about fifteen miles from Newtown. The people in my family are my mom and my dad, my sister Missy, who’s ten, and my brother Justin, who’s seven. And a bunch of animals.

This is what I know so far about you: You’re in eighth grade too, and you go to Lincoln Middle School in Castleton, Ohio, which is a pretty big city. Your school doesn’t have a lot of funding and is short on supplies and books and computers, and also needs repairs. I’m really sorry about that. Maybe our class could organize a drive to collect stuff for your class.

I just reread what I’ve written and I really hope Mr. Jessop isn’t going to look at our letters before he sends them to your teacher. I don’t want him to see what I said about him. Oh, well. It’s too late to change anything now. He’s about to collect our papers. Unlike with e-mail, I can’t go back and delete stuff. If letter writing is an art, so far its decline doesn’t seem like much of a loss. I’m going to seal this up before Mr.

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