The Tale of the Sponge or God may give us nuts but he won't crack them for us

The shirt-collar has one, so too has the darning needle. The drop of water, the teapot, the bottleneck and the piggybank, even the flea and the dung beetle have one. Only the sponge has no fairy-tale of its own. A dirty pupil from a poor home, our sponge was hard pressed serving in the house of Hans Christian Andersen. The bathwater was cold, the soap stinging and the Danish writer was either edgy or away on his travels. Books became his window on the world! By now he has become scruffy, worn down and washed out and he would like to be swallowed up by the world of literature himself. For everyone is equal there. Everyone knows which part to play; one can keep on searching, being unhappy or insecure and even be praised for it. The story we bring you is, of course, a sad tale. Being a fairy-story, it is about something that is missing. It has to do with loneliness, with sulkiness, false pride and injured vanity. And with the belief that a well cultivated sense of vanity brings with it a measure of luck. It is also about the world of books. Or to put it more precisely, it has to do with the great writer's birthday and with the question of how to secure a crumb of immortality in your own lifetime. It is a story for children, a fairy-tale for grown-ups, and a sometimes-sad work for a truly hilarious sponge. Elke Schuch wrote the script for the film Die Rote Jacke (The Red Jacket) which won the 2003 Oscar for best non-American student film.