Pippi Longstocking! Finally a book that I would love to read with or to children, especially little girls. Pippi could be called the female Peter Pan. Except that she remembers and loves her parents and can be quite mature in some chapters. Her charming imagination and strong willed personality make for quite a role model.
Her games and stories are imaginative yet worldly. Obviously the daughter of a Sea Captain had seen and heard many things. Pippi has no parents and no one to tell her not to have fun, yet she takes care of herself rather well. Cooking, keeping and caring for animals, sometimes cleaning, are all things Pippi enjoys doing with her own spin.
The best details in the book are Pippi’s ability to fight with police officers (and win) as well as her success in turning bad robbers into nice dancing men who earn money fairly. These were my favorite chapters in the book. The serialized organization of the book make reading and re-reading chapters in no particular order easy to do and I’ve begun daydreaming about reading this book to my niece so that she can pick out some chapters we can read and re-read together.
Another interesting aspect of the book is that although Pippi has some magical qualities, the most fantastical thing about her is her super-strength. Also it’s not very likely that she could live without any sort of guardian. However, most of the adventures and fun Pippy has with Annika and Tommy seem like plausible adventures.
Pippy Longstocking provides little girl readers with a strong, imaginative, quirky role-model. I want to write children’s books like this one.
I remember the Pippi song from the movie that came out when I was a kid. Check my blog title. Or listen here:
Purpose for Imaginative Literature
14 years ago
I also can't wait to read this book with my 7 year old sister and my 4 month old sister (when she gets a little older of course). I love that it is not a book that you have to read the entire thing to understand what is going on. It is perfect for the short attention span of young children. I believe that the author really considered that when writing this book - not to just represent Pippi's care-free, spur of the moment personality, but also to represent children's desire to just hear a bunch of fun, far-from-complicated stories, without the pressure to finish the book right away as to figure out the end.
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