I started reading the children’s book やさしい　おおかみ again, and this time I was able to read a few pages before getting totally stuck.

そんな　あるひ、　いろいろな　きのみや　びょうきに　よく　きく
ほしくさを　たくさん　もって、　おおかみが　かえってきたのです。

Before this, the wolf had taken up eating strawberries and picking flowers. The forest fell into anarchy, because it was the wolf’s job to keep everyone in line.

The middle part between the commas is where I’m having trouble.

> I don’t know how 考えた is read

The dictionary at jisho.org does a fairly good job of deconjugating verbs. It will tell you the dictionary form and reading.

http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E8%80%83%E3%81%88%E3%82%8B&origin=%E8%80%83%E3%81%88%E3%81%9F&eng=&dict=edict

You might also try getting an audiobook in Japanese.

> also I don’t know how to translate ざまなんか.

I think that breaks up as ざま　なんか, but I think the usage is probably idiomatic. For ざま, take a look at the dictionary on goo.ne, which often does a good job of providing examples.

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/29398/m0u/%E3%81%96%E3%81%BE/

In this case those examples aren’t really on point. Next try Eijiro, which is often useful for tracking down idiomatic phrases. The trick is what to look up. Sometimes you have to guess a few times before getting something that returns good results. In this case a search which does the trick is にざま, which tells you about the idiom 死にざま:

http://eow.alc.co.jp/%E3%81%AB%E3%81%96%E3%81%BE/UTF-8/

Short words in hiragana are usually difficult to research, because you get too many false matches, and besides that they often mean lots of different things. So you have to be clever with your searches. If I were doing this, I would just do some quick research, and if that doesn’t work out, just make a note of the word and where you saw it. Read the original English version to make sure you understand what the sentence means, and move on. The next time you see the word, it may become clearer how it is being used.

Good luck!

> greetings from Poland 8D

Welcome to the forum.

> the meanings of a lot of the kanji seem to be slipping my mind

Welcome to the controversy.

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/super-important-question-about-rtk/

> あんまいない refers to something that’s animate.

I thought the topic was either the shirts or the auctions. Is your idea that it means

“There are not many [people who are going to try to sell one of the shirts], right?”

> あんまいないんじゃない？

What is this part?

> なく

Without? This usage is difficult to research, because it is so short. There are some apparently relevant search results for もなく over on Eijiro.

http://eow.alc.co.jp/%E3%82%82%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8F/UTF-8/

Also note the title of the 1961 film “名もなく貧しく美しく”. I guess sometimes adverbs get used where you might expect adjectives. But that sometimes happens in English also, e.g. the title of the 1990 film “Truly, Madly, Deeply”.