The adventures of Pipi Pantyhose have been translated into seventy languages and sold over sixty-six million copies worldwide, serving as a model for a play (signed by Lindgren directly) and as the theme of a successful feature film from the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.
In addition, the Swedish narrator Pipi Long Stocking ignited an unprecedented artistic career, because she released other titles in quick succession, which today belong to the canon of books for young readers. Two years after Pipi, Kalle Blomkvist and the equally successful Children of Bullerbyn were among the readers. They also represent Lindgren’s first title translated into Czech.
The mark of punk
The “Pipilot Long Stocking” itself in the children’s culture of the second half of the last century functioned not only as a heroine close to its defiance, but also as a suitable literary model of the women’s movement. She was an unprecedentedly emancipated female figure who disagreed with traditional patterns without restraint, reacted rebelliously to the restriction of her freedom, and her clothes would correspond to children’s collections only if they were designed by Vivienne Westwood.
The German daily Frankfurter Rundschau even described the rag-dressed street as a mild exaggeration long as “an independent anarchist long before 1968 gained any significance” and added that “it could be described as a punk discoverer – forty years before the Sex Pistols.”
The somewhat more moderate literary significance of Pipi Long Stockings is defined by Scandinavian Barbora Grenčerová in the anthology The Best and Most Influential Books for Children and Youth, when she writes that “in freckled Pipi Lindgren was able to create the character of an exceptional free-spirited girl who is not afraid to pursue her dreams”.
The strength of the character and the success of freckled adventures then lie not only in Pipia’s stubbornness, but also in his friendliness and in the value ladder, which is correct without the need to mention it. After all, Lindgren herself could be heard: “A good book is supposed to be like a pike. A pointed and sharp nose, then a piece of useful digestible meat and finally a lithe tail. “
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