Racism and colonialism in Pippi Longstocking.

So, the teaser for this article:

A German theologian has sparked controversy by calling Sweden's beloved Pippi Longstocking children's books racist and demanding additions to prompt parents to skip over or explain certain passages.

...makes the lady sound quite a lot more unreasonable than her, you know, actual quotes do:

It is not that the figure of Pippi Longstocking is racist, but that all three in the trilogy of books have colonial racist stereotypes.

Anyway.

Unless I'm mistaken, she's not calling for banning or bowdlerization—she's suggesting that footnotes would be helpful*, and that she'd like to see more children's literature about people of color.

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*Has no one ever done an annotated Pippi?

Comments

[Kate F]

I adore Pippi, but she's right--when my son reads them (or Dr Doolittle, or Tintin), we will have to talk about how was society thought was ok 80 years ago....isn't anymore.

[Leila]

I think that's such a great way of dealing with it, Kate: Books like Pippi (and Doolittle, and Tintin can be an awesomely easy segue into Teaching/Learning Moments about uncomfortable topics.

[Rebecca]

The comments on the article are quite as interesting as the article.

[Leila]

Yeah, I always read the comments section on articles like this -- they're generally at least as interesting as the article.

[CC]

The new editions of Doctor Doolittle have edited the worst of the worst out and there's a very thoughtful note from Lofting's grandson (? I'm pretty sure) explaining what they did and why. Another nice way to handle it.