But then there are jig saw puzzles.
My small grandchildren are puzzle whizzes. I think the skill has been passed down, through a long line of puzzlers. The puzzles may have child friendly themes, but the puzzle pieces are just as difficult as those of adult puzzles.
My East Coast daughter sent my young grand daughters a wonderful puzzle. The picture combined many familiar and not so familiar characters of many fairytales, into a delightful scene reminiscent of a Bruegel painting. The puzzle was fairly large. There were so many characters that of necessity they were very small.
To be honest, I am sick of the Disneyfication of so many of the ancient stories. I particularly liked this one.
The characters would have been far more familiar to the Brothers Grimm. One person in particular, the Beast, of Beauty and the Beast, looked like he had just recently arrived from the Dark Side. His eyes almost glowed. From the beginning, the small piece made me somewhat uncomfortable and made my four year old granddaughter more than a little apprehensive.
The two little girls and I set out searching for edge pieces to assemble on the top of an old blanket box in their mother's room. We made a good team. By bedtime the outline was almost put together. The next night and the night after that we worked together on the puzzle.
We found all of Rapunzel's long braid, one of Red Riding Hood's shoes, and began to gather the pieces, for a Giant. We had a good time together, we tried to avoid each other's elbows, as we excitedly rushed to place each piece we had been looking for, for some time.
The evening before I was to fly home we finished the puzzle, except for the last piece. It is always an honour to be able to place the last piece, an honour often reserved for the youngest puzzler.
The problem was that there was no last piece to be placed. There was Beauty on a brick balcony with an empty place beside her. We couldn't find the scary piece. My grand daughter said she hid it because she didn't like the piece. Unfortunately she couldn't remember where the piece was hidden.
We searched and searched everywhere, without success. The puzzle remained almost finished when I left.
Today, two weeks later, I got a call from her older grand daughter to tell me, the piece was found. Unfortunately, the puzzle was disassembled and back in the box.
The Beast will have to wait for Beauty until the next time.
I asked the little sister where the piece had been found. She replied that it was under the bed.
I wasn't the least bit surprised, because as I remember from my childhood, under beds was where scary things lurk.
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