Astrid Lindgren at Top Ten Books

Astrid Ericsson Lindgren
(1907-2002)

Astrid Anna Emilia Ericsson was born November 14, 1907 on her parents farm in Vimmerby, Sweden. She later moved to Stockholm and married. Astrid Ericsson Lindgren would tell her children stories and at the age of 37 began writing of Pippi, a name invented by her daughter. Her book, Pippi Langstrump, proved a critical success in 1945.

Pippi Longstocking became her most famous character. Pippi is a peculiar girl with red hair sticking straight out from either side of her head in tight braids. She wears mismatched brown and black stockings. Pippi has all sorts of adventures. She doesn't have a mother and her father has been lost at sea. Pippi believes he has washed up on some distant southern shore becoming the "king of all the cannibals". She lives with a monkey and a pony, financed by a large chest of gold coins to fulfill all her wishes. Pippi is fearless, ageless and outrageously rude.

Ms. Lindgren based Pippi Longstocking on her own childhood in Sweden. In 1973, she wrote "Rocks and trees were as close to us as living beings, and nature protected and nurtured our playing and our dreaming. Whatever our imagination could call forth was enacted in the land around us - all fairy tales, all adventures we invented or read about or heard about, all of it happened there. Even our songs and prayers had their places in surrounding nature."

Astrid Lindgren won almost every literary prize possible for children's books. She won the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her contribution to children's literature. Astrid Ericsson Lindgren was so popular in her native Sweden that her picture adorns a postage stamp.

Astrid Lindgren was active in tax reform and in improving conditions for farm animals. She was a political power as well as a loved cultural institution in Sweden. "Perhaps this is because in Stockholm, drunks come up to hug me all the time. And I cannot be that impressed with anyone, except for God."