Junior Woodchucks Guidebook
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The Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, or the Woodchuck book for short, is a fictional book in the Scrooge McDuck universe. The Woodchuck book helps Junior Woodchucks by containing literally all sorts of knowledge. Huey, Dewey and Louie frequently use their own copy to get themselves and their uncles Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck out of dangerous situations.
[edit] History
According to the cartoonist Keno Don Rosa, this book was written by the Guardians of The Lost Library of Alexandria, compiling the essence of all the knowledge that was unique to the Library. It was later found by Cornelius Coot who gave the book to his son Clinton Coot who, in turn, was inspired to found The Junior Woodchucks as a continuation of the Guardians of the Library.
[edit] Content
The Woodchuck book is almost perceived as magical in its breadth; while being small enough to easily fit into a standard Junior Woodchuck's backpack, it almost never fails on providing the required information. In particular, it contains information on lost treasure, a complete survival guide, extensive historical and technical information and parlors for various more or less common languages (like a minimal lizard parlor). However, it does not contain information that a Junior Woodchuck is already supposed to know, such as the location of Cape of Good Hope nor does it contain information on allegedly non-existent things. (In one episode of Duck Tales, the three nephews faced a dragon and when they consulted the Guidebook, the entry on dragons read that since dragons did not exist, there was no reason to include information on them.) In short, it is a minimal encyclopedia (although the subset of articles is extraordinarily well-chosen), available only to Junior Woodchucks.
Information is readily available by searching the extensive index; a key skill of a Junior Woodchuck is being able to retrieve information quickly from the Woodchuck book in case of a dangerous situation, such as a bear attack, an earthquake, or falling out of an airplane sans parachute.
Just as the Junior Woodchucks are clearly inspired by the Scouting movement, their Guidebook is inspired by the Boy Scout Handbook. The real Handbook (at least in the 1950's) was the same size as the Guidebook and was perceived by many new scouts as containing all important information.
