OUP unveils plans for Pippi’s 75th birthday

Next Thursday (21st May) marks the 75th birthday of beloved children’s book character Pippi Longstocking. Oxford University Press (OUP), the original UK publisher of Pippi’s creator Astrid Lindgren pictured above, is working with the Astrid Lindgren Company (ALC) and agency Riot Communications to launch a number of anniversary celebrations, including a slew of new publishing.  

OUP will publish 18 Lindgren titles across 2020 and 2021. This began in March with the release of two new chapter books in early reader fiction paperback format, Do You Know Pippi Longstocking? and Pippi Longstocking and the Snirkle Hunt, featuring artwork from Lindgren’s original illustrator, Ingrid Vang Nyman, in two-colour. A new hardback gift edition of Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard, illustrated in full colour by former children’s laureate Lauren Child, will be published in October 2020. 

OUP is also launching series The World of Astrid Lindgren, with fresh paperback editions of 15 classic Lindgren stories, all with new black-and-white illustrations by Mini Grey. The first titles—three definitive Pippi Longstocking stories—were published on 7th May. These will be followed by the first three books in the Emil series in August 2020 and reissues of Lindgren’s Lotta, Karlsson and Children of Noisy Village series in November 2020 and March 2021. The ALC recently revealed that it is also publishing audiobook editions of Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard and Pippi Longstocking in the South Seas, narrated by presenter, comedian and writer Sandi Toksvig, with the first book in the series available to UK audiences on Thursday (21st May) through Spotify. 

The promotion of the publishing plans kicked off last September, when Lindgren’s great-grandson, ALC’s rights manager Johan Palmberg, appeared in conversation with Helen Freeman, director of OUP Children’s, at The Bookseller Children’s Conference. 

Numerous events and activities with retailers were planned alongside the publishing, but much of this has had to be adapted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. This month, Grey is livestreaming a “How to draw Pippi Longstocking” masterclass, encouraging kids to join in and submit their drawings, and the publisher will share the party kits it had created for live bookshop events digitally instead. 

One of the key planned events for the UK activity was a series of performances from storyteller Danyah Miller, introducing children to Pippi throughout the year at various festivals and theatres. OUP will share pre-recorded footage of Miller’s performance with its audience on social media and its teacher/parent resource platform oxfordowl.co.uk, and Miller will host a digital version of her event this month, too. 

Freeman says: “We’ve had to really think on our feet around the events. We obviously had a big line-up, but because of what’s happened we have moved online and we are seeing such huge appetite for parents and children to enjoy things online. So the plans still stand, we are just having to adapt where it’s not safe to have people gathered together. It won’t stop us gathering online, that’s for sure!”

Child’s Pippi
Child’s involvement with the anniversary project follows on from her work on OUP’s first Lindgren gift edition, Pippi Longstocking, published in 2007 to mark the author’s centenary. She was keen to work on this edition too, not only to maintain consistency with the earlier gift edition, but also because of her love for the character. She says: “I’ve always thought she was incredible, she’s a real inspiration to children.” Child feels Pippi’s long-lasting relevance lies in the fact that “right at the heart of the story is a girl who knows who she is”. When creating the artwork for the book, she employed her usual collage technique to create “very spiky and quite abstract” drawings to reflect Pippi’s “alive and anarchic” character. 

Palmberg believes that the reason why Pippi remains iconic today is that “she fulfils all children’s wish of gaining independence”. Freeman also picks up on Pippi’s “strong, mischievous, fun and adventurous” nature as a core part of her appeal to readers, adding that these qualities feel “even more relevant at a time when there is real focus on children being strong and creative and resilient”. Child adds: “She’s an incredibly outward-looking character as well—she’s kind and generous, but she’s not twee. What Astrid Lindgren did very cleverly was write about goodness without us being told that constantly.” 

Annika Lindgren, Astrid’s granddaughter and head of publishing at ALC, says that this quality of kindness was something the company wanted to highlight during the anniversary. As Annika puts it: “Pippi is powerful, but she never misuses or abuses her power, and that was very important to Astrid.” This focus has led to ALC forming a global partnership with Save the Children, tying into the charity’s Girls on the Move initiative, which celebrates the strength of refugee girls today. 

Palmberg says: “The thinking behind the campaign is that the 75th anniversary is of course also the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, so we felt that there was an opportunity to use the Pippi character to do some good, which is also very much in the spirit of what Astrid Lindgren did in her life. In 1945, more people than ever were displaced or on the move, and we are seeing that same pattern today. There is quite a strong connection with that in the story: Pippi coming alone to a new town, and trying to make her way there.” 

The campaign, Pippi of Today, is particularly aimed at girls because, in Palmberg’s words, “like Pippi, they have to be incredibly strong to deal with what they are going through”. Pippi of Today will see the stories of 13 refugee girls, interviewed about their experiences by ALC, shared over the course of the 75th anniversary year, with ambitions to generate more than €750,000. OUP is supporting the campaign too, promoting it on its publishing and through its social media and retail channels, as well as making a financial donation. Freeman says: “We think it’s so important and we hope it will resonate beyond this exciting celebratory birthday year.”

The pandemic has meant that two Pippi productions which were due to be put on this year may have to be shelved until 2021. “Pippi Longstocking: A Swashbuckling Musical Adventure” was adapted for the stage by Mike Akers and Stu Barker; it was supposed to travel to York Theatre Royal in July after a successful run at Northampton’s Royal & Derngate in December 2019. Musical circus show “Pippi at Cirkus”, produced by Pop House Productions and ALC, with lyrics written by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, its executive producer, was planned for summer 2020 at Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkör. A film adaptation from StudioCanal and Heyday Films is also in the works. 

Positive response
As well as OUP, the ALC has also been working with several of Lindgren’s long-term publishers around the world on plans around Pippi’s birthday, and Palmberg says it is “always interesting to see what she becomes in each market”. He adds that the OUP collaboration has been “one of the absolute best examples... everybody’s really worked together”. Despite the challenges, Freeman says that there has been a “really positive” response to its anniversary publishing so far. She explains: “We’re in this quite tricky situation with the coronavirus, but people’s appetite to celebrate Pippi Longstocking’s 75th birthday is still evident. There’s just such a love for the character, and everything that’s going on doesn’t change that at all.”