Letters To Mr Henshaw Analysis

Superior Essays
Question 1
Leigh started writing to Mr. Henshaw since he was in second grade. He kept writing to him year by year. Cleary helped me as a reader to understand how the knowledge and thoughts of children grow as they grow up. First, he was just as a little boy who wants to write to someone who he believes in and really loved. Maybe he felt motivated when writing to someone or pretended to. Then later as he grew up, he had the power to write without pretending he is writing to anyone and as he said, “‘I don’t have to pretend to write to Mr. Henshaw anymore. I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper’ ” (Cleary 73)
When Leigh was writing letters to Mr. Henshaw, his writing was limited because he used to think that Mr. Henshaw would get bothered by his too many letters and knew that he was busy writing books, so he won’t have time to read all his
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Henshaw about ways to get to be an author, and he answered and said to read, look, listen, think, and write (Cleary14). Leigh followed the tips and felt he was getting better with his writing and thought writing wasn’t so bad. The second instance that Leigh receives a positive feedback from an adult that I could think of was when his mother asked him to answer Mr. Henshaw’s questions. She said to Leigh that authors are working people just like everyone else and if Mr. Henshaw spent some of his time answering Leigh’s questions then Leigh has to spend some of his time answer his questions too (Cleary 12). Third instances was with Mr. Fridley when he told Leigh, “‘what you need is a burglar alarm,’” to help him find the thief who keeps stealing his good food from his lunch bag (Cleary 48). Leigh wrote a lot about the burglar alarm in his diary and to Mr. Henshaw. And because of Mr. Fridley that Leigh invented the burglar alarm that made him famous at his school, and no one stole his lunch after he set the burglar

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