Pippi Goes on Board by Astrid Lindgren.
Title: Pippi Goes on Board.
Author: Astrid Lindgren.
Genre: Children's lit, fiction, humour, coming-of-age.
Country: Sweden.
Language: Swedish.
Publication Date: 1946.
Summary: Pippi Longstocking has been treating her friends Tommy and Annika to wild adventures, too--like buying and eating seventy-two pounds of candy, or sailing off to an island in the middle of a lake to see what it's like to be shipwrecked. But then Pippi's long lost father returns, and she might have to leave Villa Villekulla!
My rating: 8/10
♥ "Is Mr. Nilsson going to ride the merry-go-round too?" asked Annika, surprised.
"Of course," said Pippi. "If I'd thought about it I would have brought my horse too. He really needed a bit of entertainment, and a horse who rides on a horse - that would have been really horsy."
♥ "We don't need a policeman in this town," somebody said, "as long as we have Pippi Longstocking."
"No, sir!" said someone else. "She takes care of both tigers and bad men."
"Of course we have to have a policeman," said Pippi. "Someone has to see to it that the bicycles stand decently parked in the wrong places."
♥ "Oh! how wonderful! Are we going to have a fire?" asked Annika.
"Yes, siree!" said Pippi. She took two pieces of wood and started to rub them together.
Tommy was much interested. "Oh, Pippi!" he said, delighted. "Are you going to make a fire the way they do in the jungles?"
"No, but my fingers are cold," said Pippi, "and this is a good way to warm them. Let me see, where did I put the matches?
♥ "But what shall I write?" asked Tommy.
"Let me think a moment." Pippi pondered. "You can write this: 'Help us before we perish - we have been on this island for two days without snuff.'"
"Oh, but Pippi, we can't write that!" said Tommy reproachfully. "It isn't true."
"What isn't true?"
"We can't write 'without snuff,'" said Tommy.
"Oh, we can't?" said Pippi. "Have you any snuff?"
"No," said Tommy.
"Has Annika any snuff?"
"No, of course not-but-"
"Have I any snuff?" continued Pippi.
"No, maybe you haven't," said Tommy, "but we don't use snuff."
"Well, that's just what I want you to write: 'We've been without snuff for two days.'"
"Yes, but if we write that people will think we use snuff," insisted Tommy.
"Now look here, Tommy," said Pippi, "will you just answer this. What people are more often without snuff - the ones who use it or the ones who don't?"
"The ones who don't, of course," said Tommy.
"Well, what are you fussing about, then?" asked Pippi. "Write it as I tell you."
♥ "But," continued Pippi, "perhaps a day will come during the rainy season, a long and dreary day - for even if it is fun to run around without your clothes on a rainy day, you can't do more than get wet, and when we have got good and wet, perhaps we'll crawl into my native clay hut, unless the whole hut has become a mud pile, in which case, of course, we'll make mud pies. But if the clay hut is still a clay hut, perhaps we'll crawl in there, and the native children will say, 'Pippi, please tell us a story.' And then I will tell them about a little town which lies far, far away in another part of the world, and about the children who live there."