Growing up, my main source for fiction was english translations of russian books. While every other book cost at least a hundred bucks, nice hardcover russian books could be bought for 10 bucks (or 20 for a really fancy one) in India. They were cheap, but they were not bad. In fact, I still regard them as some of the best childrens’ literature I’ve ever read, along with Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton. (Baba-Yaga the witch is still one of my favourite evil characters!) The only reason I ever felt bad about the disintegration of the Soviet Union was that I could not buy any of those cheap books after that.
You can understand why I was so pleasantly surprised to find some of those books online along with a book that I have probably read a few hundred times a kid – The Adventures of Dennis! You have to imagine reading it as a kid to feel the sadness I felt each time I reached the end of the book with the knowledge that I would never find out more about this kid whose life I so badly wanted to imitate.