Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook

The Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook
Huey Duck holding forward his copy of the Guidebook.
Other Titles	Junior Woodchucks' Guide Junior Woodchucks' Handbook Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook and Reservoir of Inexhaustible Knowledge Junior Woodchuck's Book of Knowledge
Background Information
Type	Scouting Handbook Encyclopedia
Subject(s)	All Human Knowledge (And Then Some)
Released	1860 (first official printing)
Publisher	Junior Woodchucks
Behind the Scenes
First seen	July of 1953
In	Family Tree

The Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook, which has known many different editions and printings, is an unbelievably exhaustive scouting handbook, at the core of the Junior Woodchucks themselves.

Description

The Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook is a repository of absolute knowledge. It is famous for appearing rather small in spite of the amount of knowledge contained therein; it has been theorized that some sort of magic is involved, which isn't so outlandish, as the Guidebook contains occult knowledge among other things, and has demonstrated imperviousness to magic. 

Role

Copies of the Guidebook are issued to all Junior Woodchucks, who are the only ones allowed to read from it (though old, altogether-outdated editions are exempt from this rule). Good Woodchucks, such as Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, are famous for always warrying their copies with them. 

History

To be written

Contents

Location Known

• Astronomy Chapter: The locations of most planets, though not, apparently, Cosmo.
• Chapter About Old Seaman Talk: Translations of old American seamen's grunts into intelligible English. Its glossary notably translates "gr" as "Yeah" and "grm" as "Why not?".
• Chapter 8: Instructions to perform several types of rain dance, numbered until at least Number Eleven:
  • “Indian Fox-trots“ that have produced cloudbursts;
  • A “Sioux Stomp” that once raised the Mississippi by twelve feet;
  • A “Blackfeet Boogie” that creates an inch of rain per ten minutes of dancing (Number Seven);
  • The “Commanche Mountain Mover”, which can sometimes cause cyclones (Number Eleven).
• Chapter About Hypnotism: How to hypnotize animals using speech and a flashlight.
• Under “Desperate Dilemmas”: The sentence “When you can't climb over an obstacle, go under it”.

Unsorted Facts

• Information about “trade rats”, a species of desert rat with complex social behaviors that allow them to trade items from one another.
• Explanations of why ocean water might appear greener in one place than another, which is attributed to the waters being shallower, somehow allowing for tiny plants to grow in the water.
• Information about Brontosauruses, who are (accurately) depicted as stupid, shy and gentle creatures whose favorite food is the artichoke.
• A “whole page” about catching greased pigs.
• How to understand Morse code.

Information Not Included

• The ranks of the original Knight Templar in relation to each other, and how a Knight Templar was meant to enter the inner sanctum
• Dragons (temporarily removed, likely due to an overzealous editor, in the 1987 edition)
• The location of the planet Cosmo
• The existence of the Valley of the Faceless People
• The contents of a Pliny manuscript preserved only in the Library of Tralla-La
• The word-for-word of literary works, though short historically-relevant texts are sometimes included

Behind the scenes

The Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook was first seen in the 1953 story Family Tree. Carl Barks used it for the first time in its second appearance, Secret of Atlantis, written in 1953 but published in 1954.