"I'm a Dragon! Aaaaargh!!!"

There are several writers that I adore. Not too many, but there are some, and one of them is Michael Ende. I discovered his children's books when i was no longer a child, but loved them nonetheless, especially the Jim Knopf books. I love his characters, his choices of where to focus a story, and the detailed elaborations of those focal points. I love his humor, his points of view, his delicate, uncondescending morals, and, of course, his language, which - luckily for me, as i don't speak German - was magnificently translated into Hebrew by the late Landa Matalon, a gifted translator who managed to create sentences which are simultaneously old Hebrew, modern Hebrew, German and pure Magic.

In the first of the two books, Jim and Lukas come across a half-dragon - a young creature of mixed origin, a fact that gives him a hard time among his neighborhood's pure-blood dragons. His name is Nepomuk. His mother was a hippopotamus, he himself is half hippo, and that would normally call for a lush green forest with riverbanks and flowing water, but instead he's stuck in this crappy desert place crawling with scary monstrous bullies, and has to act tough. He's a comic, sad, brave and optimistic character.

This morning i finished making this, put it aside, inspected it and became aware of a dusty corner in my mind, with a blinking label on it, saying "Nepomuk".

Now, i know it is pink, and that's supposed to be a girl-color, but (a) When was that made an official law?! and (b) This dino feels definitely like a He, not a She. To me, at least.

I will add him to my Etsy shop soon. Hope he gets a warm, friendly home.


Word of the Day

The word Dragon comes from Greek for a large serpent, and depending on the context, may mean "the devil".

I can't think of a context that would make this pink dragon-pup become a devil.