Pippi Longstocking: Images of an Iconoclast

Pippi Longstocking: Images of an Iconoclast In his book on children's book illustrations as visual communication, Joseph Schwarcz claims that illustrating is not lacing or icing a text but adding a message. . . . [A] esthetic modes offer certain appeals, stimuli which represent psychological moods and social and ethical attitudes. The illustrator, consciously or unconsciously, tastefully or crudely, interprets. . . . The illustrator of children's books, as any artist, suggests meanings which he recognizes in the text and wishes to communicate through the content and style of his work. (104) This view of illustration as interpretation and a way of offering an added perspective of the text is strongly argued by Schwarcz, and he further contends that "it is in the illustrators' power to shift accents and express opinions by what they draw, how they draw it and by what they omit to draw" (100) . Perry Nodelman also examines pictures as an added element of the narrative text. In his view, the pictures assist in telling the story, and should be examined as an integral part of it (vii-viii) . It has been suggested that in order to appreciate the importance of illustrations in children's books and their relationship to the text, it might be profitable to examine several different sets of illustrations for the same written work (Vandergrift 76) . Examples of this kind of work are Joseph Schwarcz 's comparative analysis of the illustrations in fifty different editions of Cinderella. Lena Fridell's study of some illustrated versions of two of H. C. Andersen's fairy tales, and Ruth Bottigheimer's analysis of illustrations of the Grimms' tale The Goosegirl. The classic fairy tale seems to be especially conducive to comparative analyses. Many illustrators have tried their hand at them, but no edition seems to have reached the status of possessing the definitive illustrations, as is the case of some other classic works in children's literature—for instance, A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh . where the original illustrations by Ernest Shepard for a long time seemed to be the only portrayal imaginable. On the other hand, some children's books seem to inspire illustrators more than others; an example is Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which has been illustrated more than a hundred times (Vandergrift 76) . In this paper, I will examine a number of different illustrations of the same text. The text I will look at is not a fairy tale, but a modern children's classic: Pippi Longstocking by 181 Astrid Lindgren. For context I will first take a brief look at the publishing history of Pippi Longstocking . The three Pippi Longstocking books, Pippi Lângstrump (Pippi Longstocking) , Pippi Lângstrump gâr ombord fPippi Goes on Board) , and Pippi Lângstrump i Söderhavet fPippi in the South Seas) were originally published in Stockholm in 1945, 1946, and 1948, respectively. All three books were illustrated by Ingrid Vang Nyman, a Danish illustrator working in Sweden. In 1945 Astrid Lindgren was an unknown Swedish author, who had previously written only one book. Pippi Longstocking. however, became an immediate success. But the book also caused extensive debate in the Swedish press, and concerns were raised about its morality and quality (Lundqvist 239) . Inspired by the enthusiastic reception by the children, Astrid Lindgren wrote two more books about Pippi. Pippi Longstocking has since then become a modern classic, and Pippi herself is now incorporated into the canon of world literature as the wild girl and iconoclast of children's literature. This, of course, did not happen overnight. An examination of Pippi's publishing history shows that Pippi has been following a long and winding path into new territories, only slowly finding new audiences in different parts of the world. However, there has been a persistent and continuous interest in translating the books, and we have probably not seen the end of the list yet. As soon as one year after the first Pippi book was issued in Sweden, the neighboring countries of Denmark, Finland, and Norway published it in translation. Slowly the Pippi books caught wider attention, following a zigzag route through the European countries. In 1950 Pippi reached the United States, and in 1963, Japan opened...