7
Maude worked on her letter for most of the afternoon. She took a break to eat dinner (more soup) and then took the letter to her room to read it to Rosalie, who was pecking at something on the bed.
Dear Principal Fish,
I am writing because Mountain River Valley should stop using Styrofoam lunch trays in the cafeteria. Styrofoam is bad! It hurts the environment. Pieces of Styrofoam get into the oceans and make sea life sick. Styrofoam is also bad because it can stick to the food that students eat. That is gross! I beg you to stop using Styrofoam trays and to use recyclable ones instead. Then Mountain River Valley wouldn’t have so much garbage. Too much garbage is also a problem, but I will not write about that in this letter.
Sincerely . . .
“It’s a very good letter,” Maude told her chicken.
Rosalie clucked.
“But it sounds like all the other letters I’ve written to Principal Fish.”
Rosalie sat down on Maude’s pillow.
“If I write ‘Sincerely, Maude Brandywine Mayhew Kaye,’ Principal Fish will just throw this letter in the garbage. He probably doesn’t even recycle.” Maude stood up and put on her glasses. “Principal Fish would notice a letter from Miranda, because he never gets letters from princesses.”
Maude imagined Miranda receiving a letter from Principal Fish that read:
Dear Miranda,
Thank you for the well-written and excellently spelled letter. Mountain River Valley will never use Styrofoam again!
Humbly,
Ferdinand F. Fish
Principal, Mountain River Valley Elementary
Miranda would like a letter like that, Maude thought. She probably won’t mind if I sign her name just one little time. Maude picked up her lucky letter-writing pen. And with that, Maude signed the letter on her desk:
