little
pirate who spreads death and destruction around me."
She was quiet for a while, thinking. "Just imagine,"
she said. "If a lady walks by here one day many,
many years from now and she sees us running around in the
garden, perhaps she will ask Tommy, "How
old are you, my little friend?"' And then you'll say,
"fifty-three, if I'm not mistaken.""
Tommy laughed merrily. "She'll probably
think that I'm small for my age," he said.
"Of course," said Pippi. "But then you can explain
that you were bigger when you were smaller."
Just then Annika and Tommy remembered that their mother
had told them not to stay away too long.
"I think we'll have to go now," said Tommy.
"But we'll be back tomorrow," said Annika.
"Fine," said Pippi. "We'll get started on the
snow hut at eight o'clock."
She walked with them to the gate and her red pigtails
danced around her as she ran back to Villa
Villekulla.
"You know," said Tommy a while later when he was
brushing his teeth, "if I hadn't known that
those were chililug pills I would have been willing
to bet that they were just ordinary peas."
Annika was standing at the window of their room in her
pink pajamas, looking over toward Villa
Villekulla. "Look, I see Pippi!" she
called out, delighted.
Tommy rushed over to the window too. Yes, there she
was. Now that the trees didn't have any
leaves they could look right into Pippi's kitchen.
Pippi was sitting at the table with her head propped
against her arms. She was staring at the little flickering
flame of a candle that was standing in front of her. She
seemed to be dreaming.
"She-she looks so alone," said Annika, and her
voice trembled a little. "Oh, Tommy, if it were
only morning so that we could go to her right away!"
They stood there in silence and looked out into the winter
night. The stars were shining over Villa
Villekulla's roof. Pippi was inside. She
would always be there. That was a comforting thought. The years would
go by, but Pippi and Tommy and Annika would not
grow up. That is, of course, if the strength hadn't
gone out of the chililug pills. There would be new
springs and summers, new autumns and winters, but
their games would go on. Tomorrow they would build a snow
hut and make a ski slope from the roof of Villa
Villekulla, and when spring came they would climb
the hollow oak where soda pop
Pippi Longstocking Doesn't Want to Grow
Up -
spouted up. They would hunt for treasure and they would
ride Pippi's horse. They would sit in
the woodbin and tell stories. Perhaps they would also
take a trip to Kurrekurredutt Island now and
then, to see Momo and Moana and the others. But they
would always come back to Villa Villekulla.
And the most wonderful, comforting thought was that Pippi would
always be in Villa Villekulla.
"If she would only look in this direction we could
wave to her," said Tommy.
But Pippi continued to stare straight ahead with a
dreamy look. Then she blew out the light.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
astrid lindgren was born on a farm in Sweden and
spent a happy childhood there. After her schooling
was completed she worked for a time in a newspaper
office, was married, and became the mother of a son and
daughter. For many years she was an editor in a
Swedish publishing house.
When her daughter Karin was seven years old and
convalescing from pneumonia, she asked her mother
to tell her a story about "Pippi Longstocking."
That was the first mention of the character who was to become so
famous. Three years later Mrs. Lindgren herself
had to stay in bed with an injury to her leg, and she
began to write the stories she had been telling
Karin and her friends about Pippi. After
Pippi
Longstocking
was published in Swedish it was translated into many
other languages and became a favorite with children
all over the world.
Astrid Lindgren received the Swedish State Award
(1956) and the Peace Prize of the German Book
Trade (1978), the first children's book writer to do so. Mrs. Lindgren has also won the Hans
Christian Andersen Medal (1958), the highest
international award in children's literature.
Pippi in the South Seas Page 8