Fairy Tale Spotlight: Pipi Longstocking [Book Review]

[This blog somewhat spoils the last two chapters.]

"Pipi Longstocking" is a book written by Astrid Lindgren. It was published in 1945 in Sweden. I read this book to reconnect with memories I had of the old movies that I saw when I was a child.

So... this is basically "Mary Sue" the book. It is about a little girl who can basically do anything. She is even extremely strong and powerful. She can't seem to fly though, although I would not be surprised if she ended up doing that in the later entries.

The concept of Pipi is that she sort of lives on her own frequency. She exists inside her own mind and does not have much of a relationship with the world around her. If anyone says anything to her, she will either misunderstand, mis-hear it, or take the statement so literally that it ends up meaning something entirely different to her. She also often puts out the same garbage that she takes in.

Pipi boldly just lies to everyone and makes up ridiculous stories. If anyone tries to tame her, she will passively reject their attempts by way of being a brat. In this way she can rebel against civil society without really coming to any terms with it. And with her surprising strength and power, if anyone tries to tame her physically, she can simply pick them up and put them somewhere they won't bother her.

Other than her super strength, there was nothing particularly magical about anything she did. She just sort of did everything wrong, with it somehow just working for her. And the lies that she told, she often believed herself and would often do what she could to make them true. You know, I actually found her annoying.

The story of the book is just a bunch of somewhat unrelated adventures as two children from next door keep visiting her to see what silliness she comes up with next. It never really came across as very interesting until the last two chapters... which I found extremely interesting!

One major complaint that I had was about how dialog was handled. Pipi's dialog was always handled well, but sometimes when people replied to her, it was done through awkward narration. Like... the narrator would summarize what the person said. This happened a heck of a lot, and it isn't really something I am used to in books. I don't like it either.

Most of the illustrations were not my cup of tea either. They kind of felt like pictures if they were actually drawn by children. I don't agree with this approach. If you are going to illustrate a book for children, you get a talented adult to do them well to further assist the child to use their imagination.

As to the last two chapters, which were actually good, I'll say a few things about them. In Chapter Nine, Pipi was invited to a party but was worried that she was not going to behave even if she tried. Well, her attempts to try to behave actually could count as misbehaving, but in this case she really was trying much too hard which made the whole thing hilarious. Her attempts to act cultured was a riot.

The rather shocking final chapter had her saving some children from a burning building. It was surreal. Pipi was not taking the situation seriously at all... and yet she still saved the children. The contrast between her attitude and the actual horrific event was actually kind of cool to read. I enjoyed that one. It had a sort of fae quality to it.

Despite those final two chapters being excellent, I'm not going to recommend this one. I just think that there is too much bad and not enough good. It happens sometimes. I am thinking about seeing those movies again though. I have some good memories of watching them. Maybe I'll still like them? Who knows!

This blog was written on November 23, 2023. (Happy Thanksgiving!)

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