The giraffes lived in the tallest house in the village. It was painted lavender and had a red roof and yellow door. Jax was the baby of the family, but he was growing so fast that soon he would be taller than any of them. His head was now just a few inches from the ceiling.“If you grow any more we’ll have to build another house,” said his mother. She seemed to spend most of her time knitting him scarves, for his neck was growing longer and longer.
“I don’t want to grow any taller,” said Jax. And he wound the latest scarf around his neck until it reached his ears, because it was very cold outside.
Although being extra tall did have its advantages. Like when he went to a football game and could see way above the crowd, or in a cinema when there were lots of people in front of him.
But it was causing him problems at school, for soon he would be too tall to go inside the classroom. And there were other buildings, such as shops and the library that he had difficulty going into. Sometimes he would bump his head in the doorways, and once he had knocked against a ceiling light in the library and broken it.
Jax felt very sorry about that, and didn’t want to risk going in again, in case the same thing happened.
“Just wait outside then, Jax,” the librarian said. She was a kindly old stork wearing spectacles. “I’ll bring your books out to you.”
Then when his mother sent him to buy a bag of buns from the bakery, he’d had to stoop so low to get in the door, he’d ended up with a crick in his neck.
Jax was usually so cheerful and liked to skip everywhere he went, but now he looked sad. “Soon I won’t be able to go anywhere,” he told his best friend, a much shorter giraffe named Victor.
“Well I think it would be great to be tall,” Victor replied, as he strained up to see over the roof of the school. “You can peek into bird’s nests and see what’s happening all around you, for miles and miles.”
“But what use is that?” Jax asked. Looming over everyone was making him feel different, and he didn't like it.
For quite some time traffic had been increasing on the roads around the school, and it was decided that a crossing guard must be hired to see that the children got across safely.
“You would be perfect for the job,” the teacher told Jax. “Thanks to your height, you’ll be able to see far down the road on both sides. You’re fortunate to be so tall.”
Jax was so delighted that he hardly knew what to do. “Let’s celebrate,” he said to Victor. And they skipped down to the ice-cream parlour and ordered the biggest cones they could find.
