The 306 Greatest Books #165 - Pippi Longstocking

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Pippi Longstocking is the first in a series of books about the eponymous red-headed girl with the braids that stick straight out of her head. At the start of the story, Pippi is an 11 year-old girl who had been left on her own after he mother died and her father went missing at sea (and is presumed dead). Having been raised on a ship with her father, she isn't the smartest child, but she had been left with a fortune and a house and somehow manages to take care of herself, as well as her pet monkey and her horse. She is a peculiar child, to say the least, with incredible strength, wearing mismatched and oversized clothes, and pretty much does whatever she wants, whenever she wants to. The book itself is set up as a series of adventures, with each chapter laying out a new adventure for Pippi, along with her neighbors Tommy and Annika to go on. And while the adventures of previous chapters may be briefly remarked upon in the following chapters, they generally are forgotten about in favor of the new adventure. This is very much like the way that Winnie-the-Pooh is set up, however there seems to be more of a connecting thread here, however slight it might be. The book was originally written in Swedish, of which I read a translated version. I read this book out loud to my daughter as part of our nightly book reading and the translation was rough at times for me (the version I read was translated by Florence Lamborn). Word combinations that were hard to dictate, sentences that often didn't make sense as translated, and word choices that were not likely the best ones. That isn't a slight against the book, but it did make enjoying the book that much harder. The book itself was alright. I don't see how this book would stand out against the other bazillion young reader chapter books with precocious kids doing what they want, when they want. The big difference here is that the author made Pippi such a powerhouse that nobody can tell her what to do, so she does whatever she wants. Overall, it's an ok book but not one that I recommend anyone go out of their way to read.