PIPPI LONGSTOCKING
Written by Astrid Lindgren
Translated by Tiina Nunnally
Illustrated by Lauren Child
Viking, 2008
Category: Middle grade fiction
Somehow I got through a childhood filled with books and stories without ever reading PIPPI LONGSTOCKING. And so I was tickled to find this newly translated and fabulously illustrated version in my daughter’s Easter basket. (Love that Easter bunny!)
Pippi captured my heart in Chapter Two, “Pippi Is a Thing-Searcher and Ends Up in a Fight.” What’s a thing-searcher, you ask?
“Someone who goes searching for things, of course! What else would it be?”
I am, in fact, a thing-searcher. I’ve never called it that, but as I listened to Pippi explain it all became very clear:
“The whole world is full of things, which means there’s a real need for someone to go searching for them. And that’s exactly what a thing-searcher does.”
And that, my friends, is exactly what I do. The world is full of things and there is a real need for someone to go searching for them. Pippi hunts for gold nuggets and ostrich feathers, I seek trash trackers and honey bee keepers. Like Pippi, I always find something. And after these many, many weeks of school visiting and writing conferencing and in-general gallivanting, it is high time for me to get back to it … “before some other thing-searchers show up and make off with all the gold nuggets around here.”