Mess, also known as Mellow Yellow, is a street kid with only one desire: he wants to learn how to read. Because then he might be able to discover what secrets his precious green paper holds. The green paper is his most treasured possession. The Old Couple, who looked after him when he was still very small, told him to keep the paper safe until his mother came to fetch him. It has been many years now since they were forced to take him to the horrible Bean Man, and since he escaped from the Bean Man and went to live on the streets with the Cement-Mixers, but through all those years he has kept the paper safe in a flat tobacco tin next to his heart ... A wonderfully upbeat story about a street boy's experience on the streets as part of an alternative (that is, clean-living) streetgang, and how he in the end manages to find his mother.