QUESTIONS (frequently and otherwise asked) 

1. The Show / The Site
1.1 What's the show about?
1.2 When is the show on?
1.3 Are there more episodes in production?
1.4 Why doesn't your site have...
1.5 Why is the site called "Sheltered Shrubs"?
1.5.1 The Nick UK website says something different!  Who's right?
1.6 Why do other countries get some episodes before the USA does?
1.7 How do you get the pictures for your site?
1.8 I'm starting an As Told By Ginger site of my own - can I use your pictures (or anything else) in it?
1.9 Why don't they show the "high school" episodes in the USA?
1.9.1 But other cartoons on Nickelodeon are set in high school - why is Ginger the only problem?
2. Questions For People Outside Of The USA
2.1 What's "seventh grade"? What's "junior high school"?  Why do they call it "middle school" as well?
2.2 In "The 'A' Ticket" and "No Turning Back", what do they mean by "an A" and "a B average"?
2.3 How come nobody is wearing a uniform in school?
2.4 What's that banner in the school that says "Track"?
3. Miscellaneous Questions
3.1 How old are the characters? What grades are they in?
3.2 What are the words to the theme song, and who's singing it?
3.3 What does Ginger's diary say in the show's opening?
3.4 Where does the show take place?
3.5 What's with the statue in front of the school?
3.6  The As Told By Ginger message board on Nick.com has "official words to the songs", and they're different from yours.  What's the story?
3.7  In both "Ginger The Juvey" and "Sleep On It", they mention something called a "Sloppy Jane".  What makes it different from a Sloppy Joe?
3.8 Where can I get As Told By Ginger STUFF?
3.9 Are they going to sell DVDs of the episodes?
4. Questions You Didn't Know You Wanted The Answers To
4.1 What's with the word "dead"?
4.2 Where are everybody's fathers?
4.3 I've seen Rugrats animation cels - where can I get one from As Told By Ginger?
4.4 I've got an idea for an episode! Who do I send it to?
5. A Few Random Things

1. The Show / The Site

1.1 What's the show about?
Twelve-year-old girls and their younger brothers, mainly. It probably would be "just another show about trying to get through life as a 12-year-old" - except for one twist: for whatever reason, the most popular girl in school has taken a liking to one of the "common" girls, who in turn now has to tread the fine line between the popular kids and her lifelong best friends (who probably wouldn't care getting the short end of the attention stick if it means one of them is "in the in crowd").
I stand corrected - this is pretty much just what happened in "Deja Who?", and Dodie and Macie definitely cared about being left out of Ginger's life.

1.2. When's the show on?
(Note this applies only to the USA.  For other countries, see the main page.)
This changes so much that I'm afraid to answer it out of fear that you'll miss that one episode you've never seen...
Originally, it was on Wednesday nights at 8:00. When Nickelodeon started "TEENick", somebody figured out that the show was targeted at "tweens" (that is, "between" young kids and teenagers) and moved it to Sunday nights at 7:30, with reruns usually on Saturdays.  Later in 2001, the show got a regular Monday through Thursday spot at 8:30 PM.
The main page of the site has a list of all of the upcoming episodes I know about.

1.3 Are there more episodes in production?
Unfortunately, "The Wedding Frame" was the last episode made, and there are no plans to make any more, for the most part because Nickelodeon does not want any - the show was not popular enough.  (Even if they wanted to, most of the cast and staff have gone on to other things.  For example, as of the end of 2005, show creator Emily Kapnek is working on a live-action TV series, and Aspen Miller (the voice of Dodie) is one of the stars of a show in Las Vegas.)

1.4 Why doesn't your site have...?
It's not meant to be an "all things Ginger" site. There isn't going to be a chat room, message board, or a place for fanfics or fan art. (Personally, I'm not that big of a fan of fanfics, especially as there are a number of people out there who get mad when you don't treat their fanfics as "part of the real show"; as for fan art, (a) it takes up space, and (b) I'm the kind of guy that only likes "good" art, but once I start accepting art from one person, I have to accept it from everybody - you tell some young child their art isn't appearing because "it isn't good enough".)

1.5 Why is the site called "Sheltered Shrubs"?
It's the name of the town where Ginger lives - see question 3.4, "Where does the show take place?".

1.5.1 The Nick UK website says something different!  Who's right?
I go by what actually appears on the show.  Besides, the Nick UK site says Courtney lives in "Secluded Shrubs", but in "Kiss And Make-Up", the community she lives in is called "Protected Pines".  It wouldn't be the first time Nickelodeon said something that turned out to be totally incorrect; when Hey Arnold! first started, all of the Nickelodeon websites said "Arnold's parents are on a secret mission somewhere" (rather than the correct version, that they disappeared on a medical mission).  "Sheltered Shrubs" is what appears on the letter Ginger receives in "Hello Stranger", on the sign at the end of "Ginger's Solo", and it (along with "Protected Pines") is mentioned by Dwayne the garbageman in "Kiss And Make-up".

1.6 Why do other countries get some episodes before the USA does?
This is not limited to As Told By Ginger; a number of Nickelodeon shows, including Rugrats, have had some episodes air in other countries before they air in the USA.
Episodes are made in, for lack of a better word for it, "blocks".  Usually, each block corresponds to a season, although some shows make some episodes during one season's block to air during the following season, just to be sure that there will be episodes ready in time.  However, Nickelodeon decides on its own how many new episodes of a show it will air; for whatever reason, only 13 episodes, plus "Summer Of Camp Caprice", aired in the USA during its first season.  When they ship the first season to other countries, they ship all of the episodes in that "block", including the four that had not aired in the USA yet.
Also, while Nickelodeon USA holds onto "specials" to air just during the appropriate times of year (for example, you won't see the Rugrats Passover episode or the Hey Arnold! Thanksgiving episode during the summer), other countries do not necessarily do this.  (Nothing new about this; most stations that show reruns of old shows (including Nick At Nite) usually don't rerun Christmas episodes until December, except when they do something like "Christmas In July".  It's a shame, sometimes; the Christmas episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show is a classic.)

1.7 How do you get the pictures for your site?
There are two ways.
First, my computer's video card has video capture ability built into it.  (For those of you who want technical details, I use an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV with 64MB video memory.)
Second, if I managed to record something on my DVD recorder, there is a way to get images from its DVDs (but it's a bit of a pain, and for those of you who just realized that I said "DVD recorder", no, I can't copy anything for you.)
If you want to capture your own TV pictures, you need two things; a VCR (or something like a TiVo), and something on your computer that can capture TV signals.  There are three types of these; the kind built into your video card, the "video capture boards" you install separately, and the devices you can plug into one of the existing jacks (for example, your printer port or a USB port) on your computer.  (There used to be a device called "Snappy" that you connected to your printer port and then connected your VCR's "video line output" to it, but the company that made it went out of business.)  You need the VCR because you need to plug something into the computer to capture the pictures, and most capture devices don't accept cable TV signals; besides, with the VCR, you don't have to worry about waiting for the exact moment that something appears on TV to capture it - you record it, and capture the playback; if you don't get just the right picture you want, just play it back again and try another capture.
You can't simpy take pictures with your digital camera (or even your regular camera and then use a scanner) for a couple of reasons.  One, you end up getting a reflection off the TV screen, so it's not very clear.  Two, if your camera is set to a shutter speed faster than 1/30 of a second, you won't get an entire picture, as that's how long it takes for a TV to draw the entire screen.  (If it's slower than 1/30, chances are you'll get more than one TV "frame", and it will blur your picture.)  There's a reason TVs are so slow (and for those of you in Europe or Australia, it's even slower - 1/25 of a second); it's because that's how fast they worked when TV was invented in the 1930s, and they couldn't just change the standard all of a sudden because it would have meant that every TV in the country would stop working at the same time.  It's only now that they can start phasing in a better TV standard, because now it's feasible for every station to have both "old" and "new" signals for a few years to allow everybody to switch from an old TV to a new one as they become more affordable.

1.8 I'm starting an As Told By Ginger site of my own - can I use your pictures (or anything else) in it?
Go ahead - if you put, somewhere on your site, that you got the pictures from my site.  (Honestly, you should see the sites that "borrow" my pictures without so much as a mention as to where they come from.)  In addition to giving credit where credit is due, it tells other people visiting your site who are familiar with my site that you didn't just steal the pictures.
As for any of the "text" items, I'd prefer if you didn't - besides, it's not exactly "your" site if all you are doing is using stuff that other people made, now is it?  (Well, you can use the "what episodes are going to be on?" list, as you can get that from the Nickelodeon website, and the episode titles list is pretty much "public" information as well - just don't, for example, copy my character descriptions word-for-word.)

1.9 Why don't they show the "high school" episodes in the USA?
I can't be certain, but if I had to guess, I would say it is because somebody at Nickelodeon feels that the storyline used in the high school episode is a little too, well, "mature" for Nickelodeon's target cartoon audience, and the audience that was meant to air it ("tweenage" girls) isn't really interested in animation (which is why shows like Zoey 101 and Unfabulous did much better in the TeeNICK ratings than Ginger).

1.9.1 But other cartoons on Nickelodeon are set in high school - why is Ginger the only problem?
Because the other shows (the ones I can think of are My Life as a Teenage Robot, Danny Phantom, and 6Teen) don't really have the kids acting like they were in high school.  You can probably set these shows in middle school without making too many changes.  Somehow, I don't see any of these shows featuring an episode where one of the characters becomes a "coffee addict".  (Yes, The Amanda Show had its "Sugar & Coffee" (or was it "Coffee & Sugar"?) sketch, but that was portrayed as a joke; the Ginger version (in "Stuff'll Kill Ya") is done seriously.)

2. Questions For People Outside Of The USA
There are a few references to things that work differently outside of the USA.

2.1 What's "seventh grade"? What's "junior high school"?  Why do they call it "middle school" as well?
In the USA, kids start school when they are about five years old. School years start at the beginning of September and end in mid-June (the period where school is out is called "summer vacation"), usually with two weeks off at the end of December and one week off around Easter. (The school I went to added an extra week of school in June so they could take a week off in February - get this: so many parents were extending the three-day mid-February holiday weekend, resulting in their kids missing one or more days of school, that they decided to give everybody a whole week off to go on their ski trips.)
(Just a reminder to those of you in the Southern Hemisphere: it's winter in the North when it's summer where you are, and summer up North during your winter.)
Anyway...the first year is called "kindergarten" (you usually don't learn very much; it's more or less just to get kids used to going to school), then first grade, second grade, third grade, and so on. After 12th grade, you go on to university. "Seventh grade" is the seventh year after kindergarten, which means most "seventh graders" are 12 or 13 years old.
There are three kinds of schools, all of which are shown on the show; elementary school, which usually runs from kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade, and each student has one teacher for every subject for the entire year; junior high school (also called "middle school" - this is what Dodie calls it at the end of "Ginger the Juvey"), which continues until eighth or ninth grade, and where students start getting separate teachers for each subject; and high school, which continues until 12th grade.  (There used to be a difference between "middle school" and "junior high school" - middle schools included 6th grade; junior high schools started at 7th grade - but now the two names both mean "whatever is between elementary school and high school".)
Note that, in high school, the grades are usually not numbered; instead, they have names - in a four-year high school, they are "freshman year", "sophomore year", "junior year", and "senior year" - and the students are usually called "freshmen", "sophomores", "juniors", and "seniors" appropriately.  (If you ever see the word "freshperson" written as one word, it's another word for "freshman" used by someone who think "freshman" discriminates against women because it ends in "man".)

2.2 In "The 'A' Ticket" and "No Turning Back", what is meant by "an A" or "a B average"?
First of all, for those of you in the USA, I'm under the impression that most of the rest of the English-speaking world grades on a 0-100 scale, with 50 being a passing grade. (You know where to send corrections.)
In the USA, most classes are graded on a scale of A (the best), B, C, D, and F (for "failure"). Some schools, afraid of what would happen to someone they called a failure, replace F with E or something else that still means "you didn't pass". Occasionally a plus or minus is added to a letter grade (for example, "A Minus" or "C Plus"); an "A Plus" is the highest possible grade, and is usually reserved for really exceptional work (most teachers don't bother using it), and there's usually no such thing as an "F Plus" or "F Minus" (when you fail, you fail). (There was a time, and as far as I know it's still in effect, when Stanford University had a policy of not giving out F grades.)
There's no "universal" way to convert number grades to letters, but usually, 90 or better is an A, 80 is a B, 70 is a C, and 60 is a D.  (On one of the early episodes of The Simpsons, Bart gets a 59 on a test, which is an F, but when he gets an extra point, it becomes a 60, which is a D-minus.)
A number of cities' health inspectors give similar grades to restaurants - notice the "F" on Carl's lunch cart after the health inspector orders it shut down in "Fast Reputation".
A student's "grade point average" (sometimes shortened to GPA or "average") is their average grade, counting 4 for A, 3 for B, 2 for C, 1 for D, and 0 for F. A "4.0" or "straight-A" average is usually the best you can do, although some schools give an extra point for "honors" or "advanced" courses, so it's possible an average can be higher than 4. A "B average" is a 3.0 or higher.

2.3 Why don't they show the kids wearing uniforms at school?
You don't wear uniforms when you attend public (that is, "free") schools in the USA, except in certain schools where they think making the kids wear uniforms is a good idea for some reason. (Actually, occasionally Courtney and Miranda do wear a uniform, but that's only because it looks "trendy" - since only private school students have to wear uniforms, the uniform becomes associated with rich kids who can afford to attend private schools.) Another reason everybody wants to live here...

2.4 I noticed a banner inside the school that says "Track" - what's that?
It's short for "Track & Field" - what people in the USA call "athletics". ("Athletics" here means "all sports in general".) The banner most likely indicates that the school won a championship of some sort.

3. Miscellaneous Questions

3.1 How old are the characters? What grade are they in?
In the first season, most of the characters in Ginger's class are 12 years old, but Ginger may actually be 13, as she once wrote a poem titled "Girl, Thirteen" that Ms. Zorski suggested she might read at the arts fair. (Courtney may also be 13, as she had a birthday party in "Ginger the Juvey".) Carl and Hoodsey's ages haven't been mentioned, but as they're in fourth grade, they're probably 9. In "Ginger the Juvey", Blake says he's 7 3/4 years old (in "Ginger The Juvey"), but he's in Carl's class, so he's two grades ahead of most kids his age.
Ginger is in seventh grade, according to Mrs. Zorski in "Hello Stranger". (Some sites say she's in sixth grade; it's possible that she was in sixth grade in the pilot episode.) Carl, Hoodsey, and Blake are in fourth grade (Carl says "fourth grade science fair" in "The Right Stuff").
In the second season, Carl is in fifth grade; they haven't said what grade Ginger is in yet, but it would make sense that, if Carl is a year older, than so is she, so she should be in eighth grade.  However, in "Family Therapy", Ginger is still 12 years old in April, so she would be in seventh grade.

3.2 What are the words to the theme song, and who's singing it?
I don't think the song has a name (other than "the theme from As Told By Ginger"). Currently, in the USA, the theme song is sung by Macy Gray, although there was an earlier version of the theme for the first ten episodes that was sung by Cree Summer. (However, when the new theme was introduced on March 4, 2001, somebody decided to change the earlier episodes to use the new theme as well. This was an unusual decision for Nickelodeon, as they didn't switch the older episodes of Rugrats or Rocko's Modern Life when those shows started using new themes. The easiest way to tell the difference: in the Summer version, you can hear "background noises" (the song begins with a school bell, and you can hear Darren, Ginger, and Dodie greet each other as Darren bicycles by).)
In the UK and Canada, Melissa Disney sings the theme in the first two episodes, then Cree Summer through about episode 13 or so, then the Macy Gray-sung episodes begin, and the singers have not been changed (unlike in the USA).
The Summer version, without the "background sounds", is on the "The Newest Nicktoons" CD.
Here are the words (to the Macy Gray version):
Someone once told me the grass is much greener
On the other side
And I paid a visit (well, it's possible I missed it)
It seemed different, yet exactly the same (yeah, yeah, yeah)
'Til further notice, I'm in-between
From where I'm standing, my grass is green
Someone once told me the grass is much greener
On the other side
The two lines beginning with "Til Further Notice" have each phrase sung by the background singers, then (except for "My Grass is Green") by Macy
Differences in the other two versions:
The Cree Summer version has the third line beginning "Now I paid a visit", leaves out the "yeah, yeah, yeah" in the fourth line, and has Cree sing the repeated phrases before the background singers (and sings "I'm In-Between" and "My Grass is Green" without a repeat)
The Melissa Disney version has the third line beginning "Well I paid a visit", has one "Yeah" instead of three, and has no repeats

3.3 What does Ginger's diary say in the show's opening?
Today started off being j[ust] an awesome
and Miranda - like always - had to [have]
of course, Dodie was totally bummed
was really no[t] cool. I don't kno[w!] W[h]
sometimes, I almost think Carl was
Words in [square brackets] are hidden behind pictures and may not be correct. Note that the right side of the "page" is "ripped" so the entire message is not there.

3.4 Where does the show take place?
Most Nicktoons take place in "Anytown, USA", probably to make as many kids as possible think "it's a town just like yours". (Some shows make their cities similar to other cities - for example, the city in Hey Arnold! is a mixture of Seattle, Portland (Oregon), and New York.) There's the occasional obvious exception; for example, Rocket Power has to be near a beach where there's surfing and within driving distance of snow for snowboarding, so it's set in southern California, and The Wild Thornberrys moves from place to place all over the world.
For whatever reason, As Told By Ginger is set in a specific part of the USA: Connecticut. (Specifically, Sheltered Shrubs, Connecticut, although there's no real town by that name, and the ZIP code they use for it doesn't exist either, although if it did, it would be in the Stamford suburbs.) At least they have an excuse for it to snow during a Christmas special.

3.5. What's with the statue in front of the school?
That's Nathaniel "Lucky" Winslow, who presumably was from that part of the country and did something heroic in the American Revolution.  (I assume the character is fictional, like Jebediah Springfield on The Simpsons.) Notice that one of his legs is missing below the knee?  It could be like the joke about the signs that say "Lost Dog - only has three legs, missing one ear, neutered, can't see very well, answers to the name Lucky".
Then again, there was a Nathaniel Winslow who was a captain in the 10th Massachusetts Regiment during the war; as the name seems to be relatively popular, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't at least one soldier from Connecticut with that name.

3.6  The As Told By Ginger message board on Nick.com has "official words to the songs", and they're different from yours.  What's the story?
I go by what I hear on the show.  Sometimes, it's hard to interpret what someone is saying/singing, in which case, if somebody notes a second possibility, I'll list them both.  However, if the Nick.com versions come from "the writers", why does their version of "Hello Stranger" include a line where it says "I don't know this part"?  (I stand by my version of the words to "Hello Stranger".)

3.7  In both "Ginger The Juvey" and "Sleep On It", they mention something called a "Sloppy Jane".  What makes it different from a Sloppy Joe?
According to the Del Monte web site, a Sloppy Joe is always made with beef, while a Sloppy Jane is made with turkey or chicken.  (A Sloppy Joe, for those of you who don't know, is a sandwich made with ground meat that is cooked in something resembling barbecue sauce, usually containing tomatoes, peppers, and onion.)

3.8 Where can I get As Told By Ginger STUFF?
Well, mail stores like The UPS Store and office supply stores like Staples and Office Depot sell bubble wrap, but that's not what you meant by "stuff", is it?  (For those of you who missed that joke, watch "The Right Stuff" again.)
There is merchandise available at the Nickelodeon store (http://shop.nickjr.com - never mind that it says "Nick Jr."; it has stuff for "regular" Nickelodeon shows as well); at the home page, click on "As Told By Ginger" in the left column to see what is available.  (If they are selling the "star" shirt, take a close look at the show's logo that appears on it; it says "As Told by Ginger Foutley", and that's not a misprint - for licensing reasons, the logo on all merchandise has to say that.)
The CD "The Newest Nicktoons", which may still be available in CD stores (look in the children's section), also has the Cree Summer version of the theme, although without the "sound effects".

3.9 Are they going to sell DVDs of the episodes?
There are two DVDs available, each with one of the 90-minute "Nick Flicks" on it.
"As Told By Ginger: The Wedding Frame" has "The Wedding Frame", "Dare I, Darren?", and "Stealing First".
"As Told By Ginger: Far from Home" has "Foutleys on Ice" (which Nickelodeon calls "Far from Home" in its commercials), "Ginger the Juvey", and "The Party" (click here if you've never heard of "The Party").
As far as I know, there are no plans to release the entire series on DVD.  The show just isn't popular enough for Paramount (the company that makes the Nickelodeon DVDs) to make them.  Only the "really popular" shows, like SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Oddparents, get DVDs, and even with Oddparents, they don't come close to the entire series.  (Only three series I can think of are planned to have all of their episodes released; SpongeBob, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Invader Zim, and the only reasons Ren and Zim is being released is because another company paid Nickelodeon for the DVD rights.  Not coincidentally, those are the three series that have the most adult viewers, as these are the people who have the money to buy DVD sets with lots of episodes at once.)
Not having DVDs is not limited to Nickelodeon shows; quite a few people have been asking for Daria (which was originally on MTV, and is now on The N) to be released on DVD, but there are no plans for this, as the two Daria movies DVDs did not sell well enough.  (It didn't help that the second movie was a version that had scenes cut out of it so MTV could air more commercials and still show the whole thing in two hours.)

4. Questions You Didn't Know You Wanted The Answers To

4.1 What's with the word "dead"?
Sometime around 1995, Nickelodeon starting cracking down on the "kid-friendliness" of its shows. (Anyone who remembers how "Chokey Chicken" became "Chewy Chicken" on Rocko's Modern Life knows what I'm talking about.) One of the things they don't like is the word "dead" or variations thereof ("death", "dying", and so on). In the Mother's Day episode of Rugrats, they try to explain what happened to Chuckie's first mother; while they imply that she died in a hospital of some disease, the one time somebody even comes close to using the word "died", he's interrupted. Similarly, in the Hey Arnold! episode "Monkey Business", the words "expired" and "expiration" are used a lot, and in "Grandpa's Birthday", they use pretty much every term except "dead" until the end (when he says "I'm not going to die"). (If you've heard of the "parrot sketch" from Monty Python's Flying Circus, you have some idea of what I mean.) Every now and then, the word slips by; for example, "dead hand" in "Come Back Little Seal Girl".
It seems that Nickelodeon is lightening up on this in the second season, maybe because the show's "target audience" is a little older; it's hard not to have an episode like "Losing Nana Bishop" without some form of the word "dead".

4.2 Where is everybody's father?
Probably off "watching the game, having a, er, uh, non-alcoholic beverage" with all of the fathers from Pepper Ann who aren't on that show either. (Besides "dead", another of the words you supposedly can't say on Nickelodeon is "beer" - at a "live" performance during a Big Help-A-Thon, a song had the words "throw back a bottle of beer" deleted.) I assume that, as the primary focus of the show is girls, the producers don't want it to look like they're not capable of doing anything without having men around - and the easiest way to do this is simply not to have any men around! We know Ginger's father doesn't live with her; Dodie's father has been shown, but they never say what he does for a living; Macie's parents are so busy with work that they just aren't around to be seen (except, of course, in "Family Therapy" when they have to make up for all of the time they didn't spend with Macie); Courtney's father only appears once (in "The Wedding Frame"), but Courtney does talk to him on the phone on occasion. (On the other hand, Miranda's father has been on the show, but not her mother, and both of Darren's parents have been shown.)
(Notice that Ginger is a science whiz - although I did know a few girls in my day who were wise in the ways of math and science, these are usually considered "boys' subjects" for some strange reason. Did you know that in the book version of Jurassic Park, the young boy was the computer expert, but in the movie somebody switched it to the girl, probably to erase the "girls & computers don't mix" stereotype?)

4.3 I've seen Rugrats animation cels - where can I get one from As Told By Ginger?
You can't - at least not from the show - and there's a very simple reason: they don't exist. The way that cartoons are made changed dramatically in the mid-1990s; rather than paint individual "cels" (sheets of acetate) and then capture them one by one onto film (which is more or less how it's been done for decades; the DVD version of Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs shows this), the drawings are now captured onto computers, where the coloring is done and the film created. Any Rugrats cels you may see are either from the early (1991-93) episodes or are specially made rather than taken from the ones used for an episode.  (I don't think any "production" cels exist with Dil or Kimi, for the same reason.  There certainly aren't any production cels from the two Rugrats movies.)
Pretty much every show now animates this way (if they don't go one step further and do all of the animation itself on the computer, either by CGI (like Jimmy Neutron) or with something like Flash animation), mainly because the overseas studios that do most of the "fill-in" work are now geared towards computer work.

4.4 I've got an idea for an episode! Who do I send it to?
"You" don't.  Let's assume that the show's staff already has the same idea, and they're right in the middle of making that episode when they open your letter and see your idea. They can do one of two things:
(1) Stop making the episode;
(2) Keep making the episode and hope you don't claim that they stole the idea from you and take them to court (where, as they've opened your envelope and presumably seen your idea, you would probably win).
Because of this, most mail is opened out of view of the show's staff just to be sure - and anything that looks like a script is returned unopened for the same reason.
(Even though the show is no longer in production, they still do not look at submitted ideas, as it could be the same as an idea they are using for another show.  For example, "What if Dodie started a 'Dear Dodie' website and had kids ask her questions?", which sounds a lot like "Ask Angelica" on All Grown Up!.)
Here's an alternative: "fan fiction" (also called "fanfics"). If you think you can come up with a full story (rather than just a short idea), then write it and put it out on the web; check the "other web sites" section on this site's main page for places where you can post ATBG fan fiction.
Note that when you write the story, you are not limited to "how things are". If you want everybody to get older, go ahead. (Imagine Courtney in driver's education with Winston in tow - "but he's the one who's going to be doing the driving!")  Don't worry that there may already be 150 "Return to Camp Caprice" stories out there; go ahead and write #151.  You don't like what happened in "Ginger's Solo"?  Pretend that it never happened!  (If you do "change the storyline" like this, however, I suggest that you say so at the beginning of your story, so your readers don't get confused.)
I do have one suggestion: don't "write any of the regular characters out of the show".  If your story ends up with Dwayne disappearing into the Sheltered Shrubs dump, or Dustin moving to California, never to be seen again, it doesn't make much sense when they appear in the next new episode.  (Remember, though, that's a suggestion, not a requirement.  If you really want Dustin to pack his bags and go west, then do it.)

• The episodes seem to have a definite order, or at least "Ginger the Juvey" is meant to be first; Ginger's crime results in community service in "Carl and Maude", and Carl gets the detached eye he lost back in "Sleep On It" (he also mentions Maude in that episode).  Quite a few of the second season episodes mention events in "Summer of Camp Caprice".  Beginning with "And She Was Gone", just about every episode mentions something in a previous episode.
• A number of episodes have the cast credits beginning with, in order, Ginger, Carl, Courtney, Macie, Hoodsey, Dodie, and Miranda; they're in order by the actors' names (Disney, Elias, Georges, Harris, MacNeille, Miller, Summer). In "Dare I, Darren?" and "Hello Stranger", Darren's credit is below Ginger's (this keeps Ginger's credit first), followed by the "main" characters in actors' name order, except that in "Hello Stranger", Dodie's credit appears before Hoodsey's) and Courtney's and Miranda's are moved. (Speaking of cast credits, everybody gets a "Starring" credit.)
• Unlike pretty much every other cartoon on TV, the characters change outfits in pretty much every episode - and often wear more than one outfit in the same episode. (You can check out the different outfits at the Cooltoons ATBG website.) At least the female ones do; Carl, Hoodsey, and Darren wear pretty much the same thing every day.
• Also, unlike most other cartoons, if you look at most of the females' eyes, you'll notice lashes both above and below each eye. (In fact, that's how the eye that dots the "I" in "Ginger" in the show's title logo is drawn.) Most have three, but for some reason, Macie and Miranda have four - and Mrs. Gordon doesn't have any.
• Ever notice that, while most cartoons' characters have four fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot (The Simpsons even makes jokes about it), Nickelodeon's Klasky-Csupo shows (As Told by Ginger, Rugrats, AAHHH!!! Real Monsters, The Wild Thornberrys, Rocket Power) have characters with five of each? (Ironically, Klasky-Csupo animated The Simpsons through 1992.)  ("Why do most shows use four?"  The most-given answer is "It's much easier to draw", although I've also heard "it looks better that way when the hands/feet move" as well.)
• There's quite a bit of switching between Ginger being left-handed and right-handed. She's right-handed in the show's opening, "Ginger The Juvey", "Carl And Maude", and "Hello Stranger", but left-handed in "Stealing First", "Sleep On It", and "Of Lice And Friends". She's not the only one; Miranda is left-handed in "Dare I, Darren?" and right-handed in "Of Lice And Friends", and Macie is both in "Of Lice And Friends" (just before Dodie's first announcement, she's writing with her right hand; just before Ginger calls her at the end, she's writing with her left). (Actually, being left/right-handed didn't seem to be a big deal until The Simpsons, where Bart Simpson, like his creator Matt Groening, is a lefty.)
• Speaking of the opening, if you watch right at the beginning (when the scene pans down from the "LUCKY JR. HIGH" sign), you can see Traci, Mipsy, and Lonnie (all at the slumber party in "Sleep On It") together on the left.
• Lucky Junior High School's mascot is a goat. (This could be a reference to "Funky Winkerbean", where the high school's nickname is "Fighting Scapegoats".)
• Sometimes Blake is in Mrs. Gordon's class (for example, "Piece Of My Heart"), and sometimes he isn't (in "Cry Wolf", all of the desks are full and he's not in any of them).  Nothing new about this; Arnold's class in Hey Arnold! changes kids around quite a bit.  (Speaking of classes, overcrowded classes don't seem to be a problem at Lucky Elementary; Mrs. Gordon's class never seems to have more than 16 kids in it.)
• Inside Ginger's house, there's a penguin on top of the TV - most likely a reference to the "Penguin on top of the TV" sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• Now here's something really trivial: Walt Disney's full name is Walter Elias Disney; Elias and Disney are the last names of the actresses who voice Carl and Ginger.