New adventures for children

Created: 05/16/2022, 09:00

Adventure vacation in a camper: Alexandra Benke with her latest children's book "The Secret of the Golden Treasure Chest".

© Michele Kirner

With "The Secret of the Golden Treasure Chest" Alexandra Benke from Widdersberg has already written her fifth children's book.

Four friends experience some adventures again.

Widdersberg

– A treasure chest, ravines, caves, castles, even a Christmas museum: Alexandra Benke from Widdersberg dedicates her colorfully illustrated and fifth children’s book to sights in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria – and sends her little heroes off in a mobile home.

"The camper is a great way to travel spontaneously," enthuses Benke about holidays on four wheels.

Many people have discovered this special attitude towards life in the past two years - and it has become an integral part of Benke's new story,

The author once again involves the sleuths Lotta, Xaver, Rosalie and Tim in a lively adventure.

Grandpa Gustl is responsible for the camping holiday, and he packs the adventurous quartet up and drives them from pitch to pitch.

And so the busy young detectives plunge into adventure one after the other.

For example, when they first soar to dizzying heights in the amusement park and then throw themselves down the rope, hooting.

Benke also demands a little courage from her protagonists when they hear a suspicious noise in the hedge at midnight.

The grunts and puffs turn out to be Hedgehogs - a little friend showing them a treasure chest.

The trail to the owner of the treasure chest leads to Schwäbisch Gmünd, to the Lorch monastery and the Hohenlohe open-air museum, to the Hörschbach Gorge in Murrhardt, to a night watchman tour in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and to the German Christmas Museum there.

To top it off, so to speak, the friends follow “the call of the falcon” in the chapter of the same name and a children’s course for falconers.

This time, too, Alexandra Benke guides the readers into the fresh air with her lines.

"I want to bring movement into the children's lives," she explains.

Xaver only uses his mobile phone to check a new destination in advance – or to surf the web under the covers, which of course grandpa knows how to prevent.

As in all of Benke's works, the course of the story culminates in a happy ending.

"Because I want to write a positive, happy story for the kids," says the woman, who describes herself as a "hopeless romantic."

She scouted out most of the places described herself.

She climbed the town hall tower in Crailsheim, took in the waterfalls in the Hörschbach Gorge, dived into the Götzenbachsee and roamed through the open-air museum.

However, she preferred to look at the climbing forest in Schwäbisch Gmünd from afar, she says.

"I leave the climbing to the younger generation."

For all imitators, she has included a list of excursions with a website and telephone numbers in the book - and two typical Swabian recipes that the main characters enjoy throughout the story.

The reaction of her readers after the publication was not long in coming.

"A boy wrote to me that he liked reading my stories so much because Xavier was in them," she says.

Because Xaver is normally just as little a bookworm as he is himself. He makes an exception with Benke's works - and hopes for a follow-up volume soon.

"The Secret of the Golden Treasure Chest" by Alexandra Benke with illustrations by Sabrina Pohle is available in bookstores for EUR 15.95.

Michele Kirner