Bad Girl Warning
Big love for a European success story today, as Astrid Lindgren’s tale of a naughty little Swede is reimagined by Italian / French artist Beatrice Alemagna (with reference to the English translation by Gerry Bothmer). Lotta is Astrid’s lesser known child anarchist. Several years Pippi Longstocking’s junior, and the youngest of three siblings, Lotta … Continue reading
Some of the great characters from children’s literature take the Hare PCL-R test for psychopathy. Think of villains like Lord Voldemort, Miss Slighcarp, the Twits – extreme psychopaths. But what of the heroes? Psychopaths aren’t necessarily sadistic murderers, they can be people in positions of power: surgeons, politicians, CEOs of chocolate factories… Continue reading
P is for Paris. This is one of the most unusual children’s books you’ll ever read. Some might say it’s more than a children’s book; a piece of micro modernism to file alongside James Joyce’s Ulysses or a junior Bout de Soufflé. Zazie dans le Métro is all these things, it is also the sort … Continue reading
OK some serious SPOILERS coming up, but it's hard to write about this book without mentioning the big reveal in this 1977 classic school story by Gene Kemp. Following on from last week's piece that touched on gender labelling in children’s literature, here is a book that challenges readers’ expectations of girls and boys roles … Continue reading
Has there ever been a bad girl with a better pedigree than Eloise? Created by a Hollywood musical star and featuring a six your old free spirit who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York with her beer swilling British nanny, a trainer wearing turtle and nary a parent in sight. Eloise's life at … Continue reading
Pippi Longstocking is the ultimate bad girl: funny, brave, sharp, weird, outrageous. But does she really deserve a bad girl warning? I’m not sure. A better way of seeing her is as an anti-authority figure. There’s a brilliant logic and a skewed morality running through everything she does. Whether she’s giving the police the run … Continue reading
Original Bad Girl Goldilocks wasn’t always so young. The first written version by Robert Southey describes her variously as an impudent, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty, vagrant old woman who needed locking up. The Goldilocks handed down to Raymond Briggs for inclusion in the 1972 Fairy Tale Treasury was the one written by Flora Annie Steele in … Continue reading
I've always had a soft spot for incredibly rude children. In books obviously, real rude children need shutting in the garage. It's not so much the bad boys I like; Just William, Dennis the Menace, Horrid Henry et al have always had something of the bully boy about them, redeemable mainly because the softies they … Continue reading
