Dobry, Newbery Winner 1935

Well... I guess it was okay. But let's just say that I wasn't completely surprised that this book is out of print. Publishers can't print every book indefinitely and sometimes books just become a bit dated. The prose doesn't reach out and grab you, take this sample:

Dobry stood without the slightest movement, watching the light.

"It's the color that an egg white is before you beat it up or cook it," Neda said. "Come on, let's hurry."

 And that was downright poetic for this book. However, the jarring, "come on, let's go," breaks it all apart. Ultimately, the word choice is too simplistic.

This is a concept I would really like to see tackled by a current author. While I might have really loved this story set in Eastern Europe (not a popular literary destination), it was far too dated. Another problem I had was the plot, or lack there-of. We spend 80 pages waiting for a gypsy-bear. Then it arrives, hurray! But you turn the page and, "For four summers now Dobry had looked after the village cows to earn the money to pay Semo for whatever charcoal pencils, brushes, paints, sketch books, and canvas the schoolmaster could get him from Sofia." Wait, we're four years down the road just like that? And Dobry is buying art supplies?

So is introduced the conflict in the story. But conflict is much too strong a word for, 'Dobry is an artist, his mother hopes he will be a farmer, until she sees his art, at which point money must be made so he can go to art school'. Simplistic exposition, just like the book; in fact, only a dozen or so pages are ever truly devoted to this conflict.

On the flip side I loved the descriptions of the Christmas and New Year's traditions, a whole book could have been developed just from those!
But I've been having a great time besides! My days have been filled with some of my great joys: reading, puzzling, thrifting, and fantasy.

First off:
Just finished A Hero for WondLa. It was amazing, a sequel that was well worth the wait. One minor flaw, now I need to wait for the conclusion because WondLa is a trilogy. I hate waiting for the 'next book'; at least with Harry Potter it seemed like 90% of the world was waiting with me. I'm all alone at this bus terminal.

Except you never know when the bus will arrive.

Puzzling:

One of my other great loves is the jigsaw puzzle. I'll admit that I've been dedicating my evenings to the puzzle and not the page. It's just so satisfying to finish a thousand pieces of nothing and turn it into a picture.

Thrifting:

How does a book lover with no disposable income build their collection? Thrift stores of course! I've been able to get 30 paperbacks under $10 before, unfortunately I don't know the best shops around here. I have found a Goodwill with 60 cent hardcovers and 50 cent paperbacks. It's a brutal place known as The Last Chance, with no organization and desperate shoppers, which makes walking out with choice books all the more satisfying. This week I found an old children's book by Sid Fleischman (The Whipping Boy), an old reading primer, some fun picture books, a Popples poetry book (I literally squealed when I found this), and, my personal favorite, a school geography book from 1883.

Fantasy:

It's hard to read and do a jigsaw puzzle at the same time. This gave me a chance to catch up on Merlin a fantastic BBC series. I'm on a bit of a King Arthur streak, watching shows, documentaries, and reading stray articles. Perhaps I'll go after L'morte de Arthur soon. (In addition to some other Arthur books I found down out thrifting.)