This 12 Year Old Boy Is Basically The Real Life Equivalent Of Matilda

Something tells us Ms Trunchbull wouldn’t be a fan of this. She wouldn’t be a fan of this at all.

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Something tells us Ms Trunchbull wouldn’t be a fan of this. She wouldn’t be a fan of this at all.

As a heads up, you might want to sit down before reading this. Grab some kind of tissue paper / handkerchief / old sock. Clutch a teddy bear. Order a pillow from Amazon. Remove your mascara. Do whatever you need to do in order to prepare for an onslaught of emotion. Because boy oh boy, are you going to cry at this one.

Matthew Flores lives in Utah, America, and he loves reading. You know Matilda? Matthew is basically Matilda, minus the whole magical-powers thing. Because while Matilda taught herself to read by staring intently at cereal packets and adverts in newspapers, Matthew reads the junk mail that’s delivered to his home every week.

Yep, while you spent your childhood trying to persuade your parents to let you trade in your Waterstones vouchers in favour of a new video game, 12 year old Matthew is desperate to own a book. Or at least, he was desperate, until he got talking to his local postman, Ron Lynch, and inadvertently scored himself hundreds of free books in the process.

Matthew asked Ron if he had any spare junk mail for him to read, explaining that he couldn’t get to the library because he can’t afford the bus and his parents don’t have a car. So Ron decided to step in - posting Matthew’s address on his Facebook page and asking his friends to donate a few free books to help him out.

But it wasn’t just his friends who saw the message. In the space of a month, Ron’s post office has been swamped with parcels, and Matthew has received 350 books from as far away as India, Australia and the UK.

‘I thought they were mistaken, but they were for me,’ said Matthew, in what might just be the most heartwarming interview we’ve ever seen. And if you’d like to get involved, don’t worry - Matthew promises that he’ll read every book that he gets sent - and that afterwards, he and Ron will help distribute the books to other children who don’t have anything to read, too.

Crying yet? Toldcha.

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