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KRUIMELTJE
A Dutch port in the year 1921. A ten-year-old boy, known to everyone simply as ’little crumb’, wanders down the cold and wintry alleyways. His foster mother, Mrs. Koster, to whom he was given by his mother when he was a baby, is very poor and so he is obliged to somehow earn his keep out on the streets. Only when he has earned enough can he go home. Sometimes Little Crumb feels very lonely without a mother, father, brother or a sister. But he doesn’t let it get him down and even manages to have some fun from time to time. His favourite trick is to fool the storekeepers by stealing bread or fruit. He often gets caught by the police – but they don’t really know what to do with him. One day Mrs. Koster dies. On her deathbed she gives Little Crumb a locket containing the photographs of his parents. From this moment on, the boy keeps the locket with him wherever he goes. Wilkes the greengrocer knows the street gang all too well and decides to take in Little Crumb to live with him. Wilkes is working on a book about the adventures he had with his childhood friend. When he shows Little Crumb a photograph of this friend, Little Crumb is gobsmacked to see that this young man is none other than the man in the photograph in his locket. His name, he learns, is Harry Volker and he went to America as a gold prospector a good ten years ago. Little Crumb pesters Wilkes until finally, he agrees to set out to look for Volker. In the meantime, Little Crumb is put in a children’s home. Life there is far from a bed of roses, but at least Little Crumb can live in hope of one day meeting his parents. Who knows, maybe the future holds something better in store for him than a life on the streets . . .
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