The Clue in the Recycling Bin by Gertrude Chandler Warner

CHAPTER 1
    Treasures Everywhere
    â€œO h,” said Violet. “Mrs. McGregor needs help.” Violet, who was ten years old and a bit shy, opened the screen door to let Mrs. McGregor into the sunporch.
    â€œThank you, Violet,” said Mrs. McGregor as she squeezed through the opening, cradling a big green object in her arms.
    At closer look, Henry saw that the big green thing was a metal frog. He guessed that the frog was heavy, so he took it from Mrs. McGregor. At fourteen, Henry was the oldest of the four Alden children. “What would you like me to do with this?” he asked.
    â€œOh, thank you, Henry,” said Mrs. McGregor, the cook and housekeeper. She worked for James Alden, the children’s grandfather and guardian. “How do you think it would look if we put it here, on the floor of the sunporch?”
    Henry put the frog down and stepped back to look at it.
    â€œIt looks very good,” said twelve-year-old Jessie. “Where did you get it?”
    Mrs. McGregor smiled. “I rescued it from the new recycling center that opened last week.”
    â€œRescued?” asked Benny, who was six years old. “Was the frog in trouble?”
    â€œNo,” laughed Mrs. McGregor. “The manager of the new recycling center puts a few things alongside her shed each morning—things she thinks can be reused. When I took my recycling in this morning, I saw this frog alongside the shed. Kayla, the manager, told me I should feel free to take it and reuse it.”
    Mrs. McGregor stepped back to look at the big metal animal. “Hmmm,” she said. “I really liked the color of this frog when I saw it. But now I’m not exactly sure how we can reuse this frog.”
    â€œI know!” said Benny. “It’s so big, it can guard our sunporch!”
    Henry, Jessie, and Violet laughed.
    â€œWe already have Watch,” said Jessie. Watch was the dog the Aldens had found and taken in. After their parents had died, the four children ran away and lived in an old boxcar in the woods. They ran away because their grandfather, whom they had never met, was going to be their guardian. They thought he would be a mean person. They turned out to be wrong: Their grandfather was a good person. He found them and brought them to live with him.
    â€œWell,” said Mrs. McGregor as she patted the large metal frog, “the frog can help Watch watch. And now it’s time for me to make breakfast.”
    As the children helped Mrs. McGregor bysetting the table, they talked about the new recycling center.
    â€œDoes it take newspapers and cans and plastic?” asked Jessie.
    â€œYes, it does,” said Mrs. McGregor.
    â€œWhat’s this I hear?” asked Grandfather as he walked into the kitchen.
    â€œThere’s a new recycling center right here in Greenfield,” answered Henry. “And it takes newspapers and cans and plastic bottles.”
    â€œThat’s wonderful,” said Grandfather. “That means I don’t have to drive the newspapers to Silver City and the cans and plastics to Elmford. That will mean less use of gasoline.”
    Everyone agreed that the new recycling center was a wonderful thing for the town of Greenfield. “The more things we recycle and reuse, the fewer natural resources we use up,” said Grandfather.
    â€œI know what a natural resource is,” announced Benny. “It’s trees and land and water.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said Henry. “If we use oldpaper to make new paper, we save more trees.”
    â€œOh boy,” said Benny. “Let’s take all our old papers down to the new recycling center today!”
    Jessie, Violet, and Henry all liked Benny’s idea. After breakfast the four children went into the garage and looked at the piles of recycling. There was a cardboard pile and, next to it, a newspaper pile. There was a box filled with metal cans and a big bag of plastic bottles,