Based in Sacramento, Derek Steffen is a freelance fiction editor who works with budding authors in honing their foundational grammar and writing skills. Derek Steffen of Sacramento enjoys reading children’s literature when he has the opportunity.
One of the classics of the children’s fiction genre is Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, which was published in 1945 and broke new ground in portraying a protagonist who was a fiercely independent girl. With freckles and red hair in pigtails, the nine-year-old Pippi possesses enough strength to lift a horse and what was described in a 2018 Paris Review article as “an anarchic spirit.”
With her mother having died when she was a baby, Pippi lives alone with a pet monkey and makes key life decisions, such as when she will go to bed, on her own. Her motto in life is one of overcoming adversity and, as she puts it, “Don’t you worry about me, I’ll always come out on top.”
Lindgren lived by much the same ethos as her protagonist and had a core belief that people should stand on their own two feet at every stage in life. Having become pregnant out of wedlock at age 18, she left Stockholm to have the baby in Copenhagen and put her son into foster care for three years, until she was able to regain custody. Marrying in 1941, she placed in Pippi a combination of her independence and a spirit of rebellion against the fascist forces of the era. Living until 2002, Astrid Lindgren was a widow for much of her life and became revered in Sweden as a tireless champion for workers, the environment, and animals.
One of the classics of the children’s fiction genre is Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, which was published in 1945 and broke new ground in portraying a protagonist who was a fiercely independent girl. With freckles and red hair in pigtails, the nine-year-old Pippi possesses enough strength to lift a horse and what was described in a 2018 Paris Review article as “an anarchic spirit.”
With her mother having died when she was a baby, Pippi lives alone with a pet monkey and makes key life decisions, such as when she will go to bed, on her own. Her motto in life is one of overcoming adversity and, as she puts it, “Don’t you worry about me, I’ll always come out on top.”
Lindgren lived by much the same ethos as her protagonist and had a core belief that people should stand on their own two feet at every stage in life. Having become pregnant out of wedlock at age 18, she left Stockholm to have the baby in Copenhagen and put her son into foster care for three years, until she was able to regain custody. Marrying in 1941, she placed in Pippi a combination of her independence and a spirit of rebellion against the fascist forces of the era. Living until 2002, Astrid Lindgren was a widow for much of her life and became revered in Sweden as a tireless champion for workers, the environment, and animals.
