Gilbert Filbert and his big MAD box

Ian Gilbert

• Editore: Independent Thinking Press
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781781352762
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Business General

Gilbert Filbert and His Big MAD Box, by Ian Gilbert and Andy Gilbert, is the story of one boy's desire to make a difference and help his mother find her smile again. It is a book about a boy, a box and a battle for a penguin but, more than that, it is a tale about families, hope and how to make dreams come true. When Gilbert's school project challenges him to 'make a difference', grandma introduces him to the mysterious big MAD box. Each of the sides helps Gilbert to focus on a different aspect of the challenge: setting a goal, identifying the reasons behind the goal, developing self-belief, possibility thinking, making a plan and taking action. Finally, Gilbert learns to appreciate what's inside and celebrate his unique qualities and attributes, which have helped him to succeed at his challenge. As grandma tells Gilbert, any problem is really an opportunity in a hat. The story is deliberately split into short chapters, each relating to a step in the thinking process. The resources provided mean readers can plan to make a difference of their own and develop their possibility thinking. Drawing on proven thinking and success strategies used by leading businesses and organisations, this entertaining, accessible and humorous book is designed to show young people the power of having a goal, having a plan and making a difference. A goal without a plan, they say, is just a wish. This book has been written especially for young people to show them how to set about turning wishes into reality by applying the sorts of planning tools usually only found in big business. The powerful set of thinking tools included in this book will help young people to develop habits of mind that will last a lifetime. The book can be read on a number of levels: as an amusing story, as a method for developing young people's own thinking processes, as a tool for engaging groups of young people in their thinking, or all three. The book also includes a Gilbert Filbert big MAD box which you can cut out, or download and print, together with a finger questions sheet (this will make sense once you have read the book!). Suitable for young people (aged 11+) to use on their own thinking adventures. Also suitable for parents, teachers or anyone working with teenagers who wants to join in the journey.

Chapter 1

‘Wwwyyyaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhububububllllmshrlp … ftftft.’

That was the noise that had woken Gilbert Filbert up on most days since the birth of his baby sister and today had been no different.

‘Wwwyyyaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhububububllllmshrlp … ftftft … brbllulululshhhhy.’

When Gilbert’s mum first came back from the hospital with his new sister, Hilbert, she spent a lot of time with her. She would be the one to get up at all hours to stop Hilbert making that terrible noise, day or night, day and night. She would be the one feeding her. She would be the one mopping things up when it came out the other end. But then Gilbert’s mum became ‘tired’, as Gilbert’s dad explained to him one day in a way that gave Gilbert the impression ‘tired’ meant something else. That’s why Gilbert’s grandma was staying with them for a few weeks and now it was grandma, with her carefully curly white hair, who would go in and calm Hilbert down very early each morning.

When Hilbert was asleep, with his mum now in bed all day and his dad at work till late, Gilbert consoled himself with the fact that there was at least a certain amount of special time each day that he didn’t have to share with anyone but his beloved grandma. And that made him very happy indeed. Every afternoon he would rush home from school, past the clock tower that struck thirteen once every seventeen years, past the factory – sad that it no longer made anything, along the side of the river where the supermarket trollies lay on their sides like the skeletons of robot mermaids, into the estate where he lived with its tiny orange and pink houses, with even tinier gardens where little children sat on plastic police cars watching him run by, past his annoying 6-year-old neighbour, little Arnav, who always waited for him to come back from school so he could ask him what his favourite fish was that day – ‘Sundaland Noodlefish today, Arnav!’, down the edge of his house, letting the side alley gate crash behind him and into the kitchen where he would find grandma sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of tea, two mugs and a half-eaten packet of fig rolls. In fact, no matter how many fig rolls they ate between them, the packet always miraculously reverted to half full the following day. Or was it half empty?

‘So, how was school then, Gilbert?’ asked grandma as she let her worn fingers snuffle around inside the half-empty, half-full biscuit packet.

‘It was okay,’ replied Gilbert in his customary manner. What he really wanted to say was, ‘IT WAS THE MOST BORING THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD AND SITTING WATCHING A BADGER HAVING A SCRATCH WOULD BE A GAZILLION TIMES MORE INTERESTING!’ but he thought that might be rude, especially as grandma hadn’t been to school very much when she was a girl.

‘It was okay, was it?’ replied grandma. ‘As good as that?’

‘How’s Hilbert?’ said Gilbert, changing the subject before grandma could get round to asking him about Mr Reaper the science teacher, his arch-enemy and the only man who could make an explosion in a test tube boring.

‘Hilbert is … well … either asleep or noisy,’ replied grandma, with a slurp of her tea. ‘But then babies be what babies do, and babies b’aint be ought but babies, and that’s about the size of it. Fig roll?’

‘Grandma?’ asked Gilbert, hesitantly, as he took the biscuit his grandmother was offering him. Grandma raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve got a problem.’

‘If problems were tadpoles there would be no jam till Tuesday,’ said grandma knowingly. Gilbert hesitated. His grandma had a lot of sayings like this and Gilbert was never sure if they actually made sense. ‘Anyhoo,’ he continued, ‘like I was saying, I’ve got a problem and I was wondering if you could help me?’

‘When your dear old grandad, God rest his soul, was in China,’ replied grandma before Gilbert could continue, ‘he met an old man who said to him that every problem is just an opportunity in a hat.’

‘In a hat?’

‘Right so.’

‘Why a hat?’

‘So you don’t recognise it, of course.’

‘So, what you’re saying is that I don’t have a problem …’

‘Nope.’

‘I have an opportunity …’

‘Yep.’

‘In a hat.’

‘In a hat.’

‘Okay,’ continued Gilbert in a hesitant voice. ‘So, my “opportunity in a hat” is this …’

‘Go on,’ encouraged grandma as she took a large bite out of most of a fig roll.

‘Well, we have a competition at school all about “making a difference”. Whoever makes the biggest difference wins a prize.’

‘Making a difference, you say,’ said grandma, cocking her head to one side.

‘Yes,’ said Gilbert, ‘it’s …’

‘A competition, you say,’ said grandma, cocking her head to the other side.

‘Yes, it’s …’

‘A school, you say,’ said grandma, cocking her head to both sides now.

‘Yes,’ replied Gilbert patiently, ‘my school. Whoever makes the biggest difference wins a trip to an “attraction of their choice” next month.’

‘An “attraction of their choice” eh? Like the park?’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘Or the funfair?’

‘Yes, I …’

‘Or Clark Gable?’

‘Erm …’

‘Or the seaside?’

‘Yes, grandma!’

‘The seaside, you say …’ continued grandma with a faraway look in her eye. ‘Very wet, the seaside, wet like an eel’s hanky.’

‘So …’ continued Gilbert, having as much luck thinking where an eel might keep a hanky as he had working out what a Clark Gable was, ‘will you help me? I really want to win but I have no idea how to make a difference.’

Grandma was staring into space, a fig roll going round and round in her mouth as she cogitated on what Gilbert had asked.

‘Your grandad also once met another man …’ began grandma, mysteriously.

‘In China?’ asked Gilbert.

‘No, in Leicester,’ replied grandma quickly but with no less an air of mystery. ‘He told him about a gift that only he knew about. A secret gift he had been given when he was a child – a gift he had kept hidden for a thousand years.’

‘A thousand years?’ questioned Gilbert, who knew his grandmother’s stories had as many holes in them as his dad’s Sunday pants on washday.

‘A thousand years,’ continued grandma before adding, ‘which is a very long time indeed. Especially in Leicester.’

Gilbert couldn’t help thinking that the story would have been better if it had been set in the Far East, and not the East Midlands, but he decided to encourage grandma to continue anyway. ‘Go on, grandma,’ he said, ‘did he say what the gift was?’

‘For all that time he had kept this gift hidden.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, he swore your grandad to secrecy before he would tell him. Your grandad has only ever shared the story with me, but even then I had to promise never to tell a living soul. Or the other sort. I said to him that I crossed my heart and hoped to fly.’

‘You mean “die”,’ corrected Gilbert.

‘No, fly,’ continued grandma. ‘I hate flying. Anyways up, your grandad said this man then pulls out an old shrivelled piece of paper and lays it on the bar top in front of him.’

‘Bar top?’ asked Gilbert with a smile.

‘Yes,’ continued grandma impatiently, ‘he spread out the map on top of this chocolate bar and then with a wizened old finger he pointed out a mysterious wood on his map.’

‘Was the gift hidden in the wood?’ asked Gilbert excitedly.

‘Nope,’ replied grandma. ‘You see, the mysterious wood was down a lane at the end of which was a field. Now, in this field was a small hill, as tall as a man but not as clever. And on that hill was a rock, old like time and twice as lumpy, and in that rock …’

‘Yes?!’ encouraged Gilbert breathlessly. ‘Go on …’

‘In that rock was a cave and in that cave was …’

‘Yyyyaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh …’ Hilbert was awake again and making her presence felt throughout the house.

‘Quick, grandma,’ urged Gilbert, ‘what was in the cave?’

Grandma hesitated, torn between finishing her story, rooting in the packet for another biscuit or answering Hilbert’s cry. In the end, she felt she had time for all three and, standing up from the kitchen table waving a final fig roll in a triumphant manner she said, ‘And in the cave was a box …’

‘A box?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yaaaaarrrrrggggghhh …’

‘But not just any box. This was a magical box.’

‘What made the box magical, grandma?’

‘Well, it had not one …’

‘Yes?’

‘Not two …’

‘Yyyaaaaarrrrrggggghhhbbbbbllllmlmlmlm …’

‘Go on.’

‘Not three …’

‘Wwwwaaaaaaaaaghghghghmngmngmngmng …’

‘Go on!’

‘Well, in the cave in the rock on the hill in the field down the lane near the wood was a magical box with seven sides!’

‘Seven?’ exclaimed Gilbert, caught between excitement and anti-climax, as was so often the case with grandma’s stories.

‘But you see, boy,’ said grandma, ‘what made the box magical wasn’t so much what it was but what it said. The secret to all you ever wanted could be found on the box’s seven sides.’

Grandma was about to walk out of the door, but then she turned slowly and, in a voice like gravy, said, ‘Once you know what’s on the box, then, and only then, you can make a difference, a really big difference.’ And with that she slipped out of the kitchen and up to the room where that awful sound – and now an even more awful smell – was coming from.

‘A really big difference …’ said Gilbert, half to hi...