Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking and Pippi Goes on Board, books one and two of The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking
A little girl with a big heart and a horse on her porch...
Near the end of Pippi Goes on Board, a group of children and townspeople gather together to bid Pippi farewell as she is about to sail off with her father, Captain Ephraim, to become a South Sea Islands princess.
"Three cheers for Pippi Longstocking!" they cried.
I agree. Three cheers for Pippi Longstocking, one of the most wonderful of children's literary characters you will ever come across. I read her as a child and loved her, and now, I'm reading her as an adult and love her still.
Pippi is nine years old and lives all by herself in an old house called Villa Villekulla, surrounded by a gloriously untended garden at the edge of a very small Swedish town. Well, not all alone. Mr. Nilsson, a monkey who was a present from her father, and her pet horse, who stays on the porch, live with her. Her father was a sea captain who had been blown overboard and disappeared, (Pippi believes that he is now a South Sea Islands king) and her mother had died when Pippi was just a baby, and was even now, Pippi knew, watching her little girl through a peephole in the sky.
"Don't you worry about me." Pippi tells her mother, looking up at the sky. "I'll always come out on top."
And Pippi always does.
Pippi's hair is the color of carrots, woven into two tight braids that stick straight out, and she is dotted all over with freckles. She wears a dress that she made herself, blue with red patches, and a pair of stocking with one leg green and the other brown. On her feet, but twice as long, were a pair of black shoes that her father had bought her, with plenty of room to grow into.
Something else about Pippi, she is very, very strong. She can, and does, lift her horse onto the porch when the horse is tired. She also had a suitcase full of gold coins, and is happy to share.
Pippi's two best friends live next door. Tommy and Annika are very well-behaved children, and both enjoy their adventures with their new neighbor. Things happen when Pippi is around, wonderful things, and adventures are an everyday occurrence.
There is the time when Pippi takes on a group of bullies picking on a younger boy, and when Pippi intercedes, they make fun of her hair and freckles. Well, Pippi is quite fond of both, their taunts don't hurt her, but she teaches them a lesson - tossing them in the air, hanging them across a big tree branch - that they never forget. And don't even think about whipping a horse, Pippi will make sure that you know exactly what that feels like.
Then there is the time that Pippi goes to school. Pippi doesn't have a lot of use for school, but she goes at her friends urging and, while she and the teacher do like each other (it was a process), both decide that perhaps school is not for Pippi, at least just then.
The adventures just keep on coming with each new chapter, and Pippi always, as she puts it, comes out on top. That Pippi Longstocking appeals to children is no great mystery, she is the embodiment of many a child's fantasy. She lives all by herself, is entirely self-sufficient, and does exactly what she wants. True, she does regret some of her actions, but she learns from her mistakes, and her intentions are always good. She's a happy-go-lucky little girls who is generous, kind, a loyal friend, fearless, and willing to share her joy with all.
Pippi isn't perfect, and she is always willing to self-improve, if, this is a big if, if the so-called improvement makes sense to her. She has a huge imagination - although a lot of it is based on things that really happened - but her stories are often preposterous. She says she needs to stop lying, but she has, as kids often do, an imagination that makes the borders between fact and fiction more than a little fuzzy at times.
Pippi is never boring.
Pippi Longstocking books are perfect for read-aloud in the elementary classroom. Every chapter is a separate adventure, and the chapters are only around five to seven pages each.
Astrid Lindgren was Swedish, and there are references sprinkled about in both books that highlight this fact. I now know there is actually something called fruit soup (Fruktsoppa). If you're interested, recipes abound on the internet.
One caveat using Pippi as a read-aloud. Make sure that you use a recent edition, such as translator Susan Beard's 2020 edition, from Penguin Young Readers Group. Lindgren penned her first Pippi Longstocking in the 1940s, and used terms that are not acceptable today. I have Viking's 1997 edition of the books, where Pippi refers to her father as a "cannibal king" and uses the word Hottentots, a pejorative used in the past to describe peoples of Africa. Beard's translation substitutes South Sea Islands for cannibals and removes any reference to Hottentots.
Astrid Ericsson Lindgren was born in 1907 on a farm outside of Vimmerby, Sweden and died in 2002 in Stockholm. Her first children's book was published in 1944, followed by the first Pippi Longstocking book. Pippi's story began in 1941 when Lindgren's seven-year-old daughter Karin was ill and bed-bound with pneumonia. She demanded a story, and when Lindgren asked her what she should tell, Karin replied Pippi Longstocking, a name the seven-year-old conjured all by herself. Lindgren began telling, and in 1944 wrote down all the stories as a book to give to Karin on her tenth birthday. Afterwards, she sent the manuscript to a publisher, got no results, then entered another publisher's contest, and won first prize, along with a book contract.
Pippi was popular in Sweden, and in 1950 Viking published an American version. Lindgren went on to a distinguished career as a children's author, and won numerous awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen award in 1958.
Lindgren created a series of diaries - seventeen in all - chronicling the war years from 1939 to 1945. She also worked for the Swedish government during that time in a classified position in the secret services.
Lindgren was an animal rights activist her entire life, and in 1980 the government enacted a new Swedish Animal Protection Act that came to be known as Lex Lindgren, or Lindgren's Law.
Astrid Lindgren's official website can be accessed here. It is definitely worth checking out.
Coming up next: Still deciding. So many choices!
*************************************************
An aside that has nothing to do with children's books...
One of my other projects, in addition to this blog, is to go back and reread (and in all honesty, read for the first time) adult literary classics. Due to a combination of circumstances, I can no long read the printed page for the same length of time that I used to, so, I turned to audiobooks.
I know many people listen to audiobooks while occupied by another activity - knitting, cooking, etc. - but multitasking is not my forte. When I listen, that is all I do. So far, it's working out rather well.
These are several of the audiobooks I've completed so far, if you're interested.
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, read by Tim Curry. Tim Curry's narration saved this book. Tim Curry's narration would save any book. I recommend any audiobook in which he is involved. While Journey was groundbreaking for its time, and Verne is often referred to as the father of science fiction, the book is very wordy as are most books of that time (1864), and a great portion of the story is centered on rocks. Lots and lots of rocks.
Dracula by Bram Stoker, read by Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Katherine Kellgren, and five others. Dracula is one of my favorite books, and I really enjoyed this audiobook version. Even Van Helsing's long-winded discourses and horrendous Dutch (at least, Stoker's version of Dutch) accent was tolerable.
Currently listening to: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, narrated by Roger Rees, Rosalyn Landor, John Lee, and Judy Gleeson. I've never read this one. The book is totally engrossing and the performances excellent. Fifteen more hours to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment