Junior Woodchucks Guidebook

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 (see deus ex machina).

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.

Content

The Woodchuck book is almost perceived as magical in its breadth; it almost never fails on providing the required information and yet it's small enough to easily fit into a standard Junior Woodchuck's backpack (this point is debatable since many stories reveal that the Guidebook consists of a great number of volumes, the full collection being usually stored in the Junior Woodchucks HQ. However, even in those stories, the Woodchucks seem to have an uncanny knack for "always" having the right volume with them for the task at hand). In particular, the Guidebook contains information on lost treasure, a complete survival guide, extensive historical and technical information and phrase books for various more or less common languages (like a minimal lizard phrase book). 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. However, in the story on which that episode was based on, the guidebook did have an entry on dragons.) Though it does have information on Martian technology despite the fact that in the Duck Tales universe Martians had not been discovered when the book was printed. 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 Boy Scouts of America, 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.

Real-life guidebook

That guide was the inspiration for the "Junior Woodchucks Guidebook", a series of several Disney books with tips, advice, general culture, and curious facts about nature and life, released in Italy by Mondadori in seven volumes between 1969 and 1974, and later translated into several languages.