Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary is a great book for students. The books main character, Leigh Botts, is given a writing assignment to write a letter to his favorite author, Boyd Henshaw. Mr. Henshaw writes Leigh back with questions of his own. Leigh's mother requires him to write Mr. Henshaw back- and this is the basis for the whole book. Leigh is dealing with so many issues (his parent's divorce, his relationship with his father, etc) and we see those come through in his letters to Mr. Henshaw. Mr. Henshaw suggests to Leigh that he start writing in a diary, rather than letters.
One activity you could do in the classroom would be to have your students practice writing letters to authors, other students, etc. Get together with another teacher at a different school, maybe in a different state or country and have your class be pen-pals with those students. Although technology is important, you could take students "back" to the time of no e-mail and have them hand write letters to their pen-pals.
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