After the publication of his second children's diary "The Berlin Trip," Hanns-Josef Ortheil was frequently asked how he was able to write such an impressive book at the age of twelve. He has now addressed this question in the volume "The Sift and the Paper." Step by step, he recounts how, guided and supported by his father and mother, he taught himself to write. He describes how he practiced and how these exercises gradually evolved into small writing projects that he conceived and pursued on his own. It is the moving story of a boy who did not speak for a long time and had to find his own way to speaking and writing. Despite all the obstacles that stood in his way, it is the story of a child prodigy who had an early sense for storytelling and possessed a gift that overshadowed everyone else's: the ability to observe.