Planinci (, 1940). In 1939 he was recipient of Milan Rakić Award, with 1,000 dinars money prize, which led him to proclaim "I was richer than the emperor". He was editor of the Pionir () magazine, from 1944 to 1949, and member of the editorial board of Savremenik (). Regional mark of his prose can be recognized in the characters, locations, themes and language of his home region, Bosnian Krajina. His pre-war prose was predominantly lyrical (collections like Rosa na bajonetima (, 1946), Sveti magarac i druge priče (), Surova škola (, 1948) but after the war, he subordinated the lyrical to the ideological and socially engaged. His short stories were often described as the "stories of a dreamer boy". He published collections of poems Ognjeno rađanje domovine (, 1944) and Ratnikovo proljeće (, 1947). Other short story collections Ljubav i smrt (, 1953). Ćopić enriched the war short stories with humor and comical elements while in the novels Prolom (, 1952) and Gluvi barut (, 1957), he gave a broad prose fresco of the first war years in Bosnian Krajina. The turning point in his post-war development was Doživljaji Nikoletine Bursaća (). Novels Ne tuguj, bronzana stražo (, 1958) and Osma ofanziva (, 1966) deal with the state organized colonization of the Krajina's population into the province of Vojvodina. The collection Bašta sljezove boje (, 1970) opens with a letter which Ćopić wrote to his late friend Zija Dizdarević (1916–42). In it, Ćopić sets the frame of the writing as a salvation from death and dark visions of the horsemen of the apocalypse. He perceives the world from the off-perspective of the good "fools", but despite the quixotic fervor and humor, the sense of sorrow, anxiety, disappointment and anti-utopian situations breaks through. In the follow up, Dani crvenog sljeza (), it all evolves into the collapse of the social ideals as expensively paid illusions. He was also writing children's poetry and prose. Best known works include Priče partizanke (), Nasmejana sveska (), U carstvu leptirova i medveda (), Vratolomne priče (), Ježeva kućica (), Doživljaji mačka Toše (), Orlovi rano lete ("Eagles Fly Early"; 1957). Social criticism In the early 1950s, he also wrote satirical stories, criticizing anomalies and personalities from the country's political life of the time, corrupted by the materialism of the "comrades", blossomed bureaucracy and sycophancy, which he despised, and for which he was considered a