“Pippi Longstocking” by Astrid Lindgren is an international children’s classic for all ages. It tells the story of the most adventurous and inspiring girl that there ever was. Pippi Longstocking is an amazing girl of superhuman strength, who lives alone while her pirate father is out at sea. While he is away, she has wonderful adventures in her large (but falling apart) house of Villa Villekulla. Her neighbors, Annika (like me!) and Tommy , are two regular kids who cannot help but get swept up in the imagination and unconventional lifestyle of their free-spirited neighbor.
Pippi has two large, long red pigtails. She wears mismatched, colorful clothes, and she has a pet monkey named Mr. Nilsson. She is strong enough to pick up a horse, and she loves to clean her kitchen by putting scrub brushes on the bottom of her feet and using them as skates to wash the floor with. She does not live by anyone’s rules but her own, and believes that if there is something she has not tried yet then she most certainly can do it, because she has yet to fail at doing it.
GEMs Book Club highly recommends Pippi Longstocking because she is the ultimate GEM: free-thinking, independent, and infinitely bound with potential. At the same time, Pippi is supportive of her friends, encouraging to a fault, and imaginative. She thinks outside the box, refuses to bend to any societal pressures about how she “should” act, and is incredibly inspiring to GEMs of all ages.
