Major Minors...

This week's Broke and Bookish Blog Hop asks us to offer up our Top 10 Minor Characters with Major Impact...

Lowly Worm in the Richard Scarry books.  He was my generation's version of "Where's Waldo", hiding out in almost every picture, whatever the book's focus.  Love(d) him.

The she-wolf in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing (the second book in his Border Trilogy).  She is both a complex, resonant symbol and a character in the first part of this novel, which - in my view - could stand alone as a heart-wrenching novella asking all the most damning questions about Americans' relationship with "nature" and the natural world, not to mention "settlers'" relationships with "natives".   Her resonance lingers through the rest of the series and within the psyches of all who read this novel.

Henry's mother in Josh Ritter's new novel, Bright's Passage, coming out in July.  Her courageous decency provides Bright with the example and strength needed to survive and to maintain his own decency in some of the worst possible conditions war and poverty can conjure up. And, yes, I am going to harp on this book every chance I get until I post a full-on review in late June! 

The little kid, Courtney, in Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog.  So beautifully drawn.  Her every gesture registers just right to enchant us without ever waxing coy or cloying.  Want my full review?  Hop here.

Dobby. Need I say more?

Most major minor character of the century! 
(I repeat for emphasis.)

Also, Dobby.

And then there's, of course: Dobby.

Or how about Dobby?

And, to round out our selection: Dobby.

There.  Now I need one more major-minor character.  Suggestions? 

MFB,
L