He drives his father to despair because he is a cool calculator, his mother because she is always in a hurry between work, household chores and correspondence courses, and his math teacher because he never gets the plan right because of Moritz. Yet Moritz is just a boy who thinks about everything thoroughly and whom even the most mundane objects inspire to fantasy excursions. Feeling misunderstood by everyone, he escapes one day and hides in the advertising pillar on the market square. There he camps out for a few days, meets a talking cat who enlightens him about life, a girl from the circus and the street sweeper who becomes his friend.
9-year-old Moritz drives those around him to despair with his slowness: his three sisters simply call him dawdler John.
He drives his father to despair because he is a cool calculator, his mother because she is always in a hurry between work, household chores and correspondence courses, and his math teacher because he never gets the plan right because of Moritz. Yet Moritz is just a boy who thinks about everything thoroughly and whom even the most mundane objects inspire to fantasy excursions. Feeling misunderstood by everyone, he escapes one day and hides in the advertising pillar on the market square. There he camps out for a few days, meets a talking cat who enlightens him about life, a girl from the circus and the street sweeper who becomes his friend.