Mats and the Book from the Chest.

By Eva Markert

Mats is very impressed with an old book he found in a chest in the attic. It is about a boy scout named Walter, who is always very happy because he performs at least one good deed every day. Without hesitation, Mats decides to copy Walter. He is actually feeling quite unhappy at the moment because he has moved to another town with his parents.

But it's not quite so easy to help people. He tries with his parents, with the people in his house, an old woman in the street whose bag he wants to carry home - but everywhere, Mats gets into trouble. And then there is the matter of the donation for starving children in Africa ... Mats begins to have doubts: has he chosen the right role model for himself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667442662

Book preview

Mats

and

the Book from the Chest

––––––––

by

Eva Markert

Walter does a good deed every day

Look, Dad! Mats held out a book to his father. He’d found it in the attic in the chest in which Dad kept his childhood things. It had to be very old, because the paper had turned a brownish colour and the spine was half off. There was a boy on the cover wearing old-fashioned shorts, a dark green shirt with lots of badges, and he had a scarf tied around his neck

Cub Walter! Dad exclaimed, as if he’d met a dear old friend again. As he flipped through the pages dust filled the air. I read this book when I was about your age. My father gave it to me. If I remember correctly, he got it from his great-uncle on his tenth birthday.

The title made Mats curious. Cub, he liked the word, although he had no idea what it meant. His father explained that Cubs were eight- to twelve-year-old Boy Scouts. In other words: if Mats were a boy scout, he’d belong to the Cubs.

Mats had no clue who the Boy Scouts were, so he read the book to find out a bit more. Scouts, it said, met regularly and did fantastic things together. For example, they went camping or went exploring in the forest and had a lot of adventures. Above all, Boy Scouts wanted to be good people. That’s why they tried to do at least one good deed every day.

Cub Walter proved to be astonishingly resourceful in this respect. He always had an idea how he could help other people. Sometimes he even did several good deeds in one day. And that’s why, the book said, Walter was one of the happiest boys in the whole town, because if you make others happy, you become happy yourself.

Mats remembered that part about making other people happy when he moved with his parents from their small town in Saxony to the big city because Dad had found a new job there. Mats wasn’t particularly happy about this move. In fact, he was quite unhappy. They now lived in a high-rise building where there were an incredible number of people. Mats didn’t think he’d ever get to know them all.

He didn’t feel comfortable at his new school either. His teachers seemed quite nice, especially Mrs. Basten, the class teacher. But his classmates always giggled at him because he talked funny. At least that’s what they thought. Mats didn’t think so. Where he came from, everyone spoke like that - just Saxon. His classmates were stupid! Only Lukas, who sat next to him, seemed all right.

Mats wondered if it would help if he tried Walter’s tips and helped others. Would that make him feel better? At least it couldn’t hurt to try.

But who should he make happy and how? He took the book from the shelf to have a closer look at how Walter always did it.