Daily writing prompt

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?

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Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren.

I wish I could remember how I first heard about it or got hold of it. Actually, strike that: I now completely remember. Our elementary-school librarian, Ms. Boniface, used to gather the first- and second-grade students together a few times a week to read aloud to us from her books of choice. Some of the ones I recall were Judy Blume’s “Superfudge,” which was so out-there, I managed to wrangle the novel from her once she finished reading it to us so I could understand how the author phoneticized the name “Pee-tah,” as Fudge called his older brother Peter, and which our librarian used to pronounce with glee as she imitated a child’s voice (hint: Blume just spelled it “Pee-tah”). There was also Roald Dahl’s “Boy,” an absolutely bonkers choice for a bunch of young tykes: this memoir may have described the Cadbury’s chocolate factory that he was privileged to tour as a kid–hence the inspiration for his most famous book–but it also detailed extraordinary corporal punishment by his headmaster, and a tonsils-removing scene involving a sharp instrument that still makes me tense my neck muscles when I recall the details of the bloody chunks that Dahl spewed (naturally, I immediately grabbed a copy of this one, too).

But Pippi? As soon as Ms. Boniface introduced us to the independent little Swedish redhead with no parents who was strong enough to lift a horse, who supported herself with a trunk full of gold coins courtesy of her absentee, swashbuckling father, and whose braids stuck straight out on either side of her head, I was absolutely obsessed. I think Pippi was my first feminist role model. She fought off two burglars single-handedly and still invited them in for coffee and a dance; she created a game with her fascinated neighbours, Tommy and Annika, called Don’t Touch The Floor, which sounded like insane fun; and she went to school for all of one day, where her overt brilliance confirmed the fact that she didn’t need any sort of teacher to correct her spelling of the word “ibex.”

In fact, I was so obsessed with Pippi’s genius-level IQ, her generosity, her precociousness, her creativity, that I decided to write and stage a play in grade two in which I starred–naturally–as Pippi. Two of my li’l classmates played Tommy and Annika, but we all know who was the true star / auteur of the entire production (which I also produced, and for which I created set pieces). See that header pic? I’m absolutely delighted it exists: that’s blonde me as the feisty orphan. My father created the horizontal-braids effect by affixing two pieces of wire coat hanger onto a slim headband, and my mother braided my hair around each piece. Now, that’s what I call brilliant innovation between the two of them.

I couldn’t achieve the red hair, but I certainly have settled into it for the last fifteen years or so. I also just noticed that the words Never Cry are on the blackboard to the right, making me wonder what sort of lesson my teacher had been up to that day (probably something about idioms, because I can guarantee Farley Mowat wasn’t on the grade two curriculum), but also causing me to wish that I’d learned those two words a lot earlier in life.

I still own my original copy, randomly wedged into one of my bookshelves between William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice” (which I’ve never read, and probably never will) and Beverly Cleary’s “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” (a very narrow second for favourite childhood book).