Red Plaits, Freckles and a Dash of Mischief

The first Children’s book week took place in Australia in 1945. Every year since then, children participated in book week parades, dressing up as their favourite character from a book. This year is especially significant as we celebrate 80 years of encouraging children to immerse themselves in books and find novel ways (pun intended) to engage with reading.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia confers awards to authors and illustrators of outstanding children’s books published in the past year. The ‘long list’ or notable books is announced around February, followed by the ‘short list’ from which the finalists are selected. The books that receive prizes often become best loved classics with children.

Book week parades started out with simple home-made costumes and a lot of imagination. Today, parents can spend a small fortune on costumes, wigs and accoutrements. My favourites, however, remain the simple imaginative costumes. If I could have given a prize this year, it would have gone to a little boy at my school who wore rainbow stockings, a long t-shirt, a hand-sewn felt snake’s head and a crocheted blanket made of colourful granny squares. He was the rainbow serpent! Second prize would have been awarded to the girl in leotards with underpants over it. She was ‘Captain Underpants!’

Teachers almost always join in the fun with costumes of their own. My go to is Pippi Longstocking because she was my childhood favourite character. This year, the book turned 81, a year older than the CBCA celebrations. I loved and envied Pippi. She lived on her own in Villekulla cottage in Sweden with her monkey and horse as company. Her father was a pirate and there was little mention of her mother. She was superhumanly strong, lived by her own rules and adults had no power over her, no matter how hard they tried. Recently, I was amused to read that she has been pathologised- it is now thought that she had ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder traits!  I couldn’t help but laugh at this. Are we about to prescribe her Ritalin?

There definitely is a bit of Pippi in my genes. I think that’s the genius of Astrid Lindgren, her creator. Every child has a little Pippi in them wanting to come out. Some manage it better than others. Of course, our job as adults is to keep the lid on the shenanigans and keep children from jumping off roof tops or attempting other dangerous things. Still, the yearning is always there to break free.

So once again, I embraced my inner Pippi and drove to school with my red plaits, multicoloured stockings and painted on freckles. The only downside was that the teachers recognised who I was but none of the children had ever heard of the one and only Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking.