sugar on the floor and uproar

The 60th birthday of freckled troublemaker Pippi Longstocking caused me to flash back to playing the braided firebrand for an elementary school play in the 1970s. The highlight of my performance was a rendition of Drifters classic "Up on the Roof" in a red wig atop a miniature house. Little did I know that I was sent down the wrong path that very day.

The first appearance of Pippi -- full name Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraims Daughter Longstocking -- caused an outcry among some parents and teachers who saw her as a threat to public morals.

Not only did Pippi live alone in a big ramshackle house, with her monkey Mr Nilsson and her horse Little Old Man, but she refused to go to school and told tall tales about foreign places she had visited with her sea captain father from the South Seas.

One sceptic was Swedish publishing baron Gerard Bonnier who turned down the manuscript saying: "Sugar on the floor and uproar in the children's room? No, I don't dare take responsibility for that."

Via Bookslut