Pijamas Reading Partij

Designed for the most fun sleepover night to relinquish our childhood era, TSBC April meeting brought upon the topic of Children's Literature. The requirement was to bring a book that has children as the main character or anything you read to children. Absolutely not forgetting the details of bringing blankets and pillows and to wear our comfiest pajamas to sleepover.

I was delighted when I heard about the theme of the meeting, as I'm a kindergarten teacher myself. I can barely choose which of my favorite children's lit I should bring. My pick is one of the most endeared children's lit authors in the 40's, Astrid Lindgren.

Astrid was a Swedish children's book author and has gotten awarded many times for her work, including the Hans Christian Andersen award. I brought Pippi Longstocking as I figured it would be more relatable than the latter choice.

Pippi is a 7 year old red haired, freckled little girl with her most common quirks being superhumanly strong and always having her hair up in 2 pointy braids and striped socks. She was odd in her own way and freakishly strong, able to lift her horse with only one hand. She is playful and unpredictable. Her favorite way of passing time is to mock unreasonable adults, especially if they are pompous and condescending to little kids like her.

She mysteriously lives alone in a small, odd looking house that has a hollow tree in the backyard. She is the daughter of a captain who went missing for a while but later turned up to be a South Sea King.

She lives independently as her mother died soon after her birth, and her father is out in the ocean. But she always came about with her 4 best friends, her horse and monkey and the 2 little neighbor kids; Thomas and Annika. Together, they build their lives as fun as possible in the most Pippi-esque way to be able to tell the readers stories about it. She has adventure stories to tell about her experience in the South Sea too.

Astrid talked about her idea of birthing Pippi as a way to have a character that represents her own childish longing for a person who has power but does not abuse it. Even though Pippi almost always has the upper hand in everything as the "strongest little girl in the world", and amazing wit to counter every arrogant adult, she often uses those attributes to solve conflicts, such as to protect other children from being bullied. Pippi does not bother to make the slightest attempt to adopt good manners or suppress her wild nature but she is a very compassionate girl who are willing to sacrifice her own safety in order to save her best friend from a shark attack, though later on she cried out of guilt for throwing the poor shark far far away in the sea.

She has every bit of good intention in her strong little body. Pippi is a literate child despite her chronic truancy and has a penchant for storytelling, which often takes the form of tall tales.

I specifically chose this book to share with the other TSBC members as I figured the character Pippi could bring laughter around the table. I found her relatable and the book easy to devour in a minute. I wanted all of my book friends to find her fascinating as I most certainly did. Pippi is the perfect topic of the evening that centered on children's lit.

It was very thrilling to hear about other member's choice of books as they all became creative in choosing the work of art they wanted to share that keeps up with the theme. It felt like I was being hugged warmly by everyone in the room as we understood each other's stories.

One member brought Ziggy's books and his only defense is that it included children in it, and that is all the requirement for April's theme. I couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably at his humor.

I was also specifically enthused by Viren's choice of bringing 1001 Arabian Nights, as her way of explaining was incredibly hypnotizing and got me hooked on the stories she shared.

We ended the night with so much laughter and talks here and there while enjoying each other's companies. We trauma dumped so much that we ran out of stories of our childhood memories, which left us to talk about the plan to swim at 7am in the morning despite not getting any sleep (it was 4 in the morning without a blink of sleep when somebody suggested the swimming plan xD)

I left the apartment where we held our pajamas party with a full heart, with joy that reminded me of childhood.