Astrid Lindgren, a Swedish author perhaps best known for her zany tales of Pippi Longstocking, offers a wide range of genres in her other published works. Her book “The Children of Noisy Village,” based on her father’s experience growing up in a tight-knit farming community, offers a glowing but realistic portrait of children and their experiences and traditions throughout the year.
For something quite different, her 1954 children’s book, translated into English as “Mio, My Son” or “Mio’s Kingdom,” is a lyrical fairytale. The story begins with a lonely boy, Karl Anders Nilsson in the English version, adopted by relatives who do not like him. His mother died in childbirth, and he does not know his father. He longs for the close familial relationships of his friend.
One day, a kind shopkeeper gives him an apple and a postcard to mail. When he reads the postcard, the apple turns to gold launching him onto a magical adventure to another world where his father is the king and he is the long-awaited beloved son, Mio.
Like all good fairytales, this is not a simple and perfect place. There is evil to be slain. Evil takes the form of the terrifying Sir Kato, a mysterious knight in another realm who kidnaps children and turns them into mournful birds.
In episodes of, frankly, gripping drama, Mio and his friend venture into Sir Kato’s kingdom to kill him and free the children. Sensitive children listening can handle the suspense likely in large part due to the repetition and predictability of events. And yet, within what we might wrongly dismiss as infantile repetition, there are little surprises and unexpected moments. This is a splendid tale of hope and courage.
Children who have listened to Mio’s adventures can invoke Sir Kato as a villain extraordinaire, an embodiment of all that is scary, cruel, and threatening.
According to one source, “Astrid Lindgren recounted how she got the idea for the book when she walked through the Tegnérlunden park in Stockholm and saw a boy sitting alone on a bench. It was a dark autumn evening and he looked so lonely and sad. She made her character live in number 13 Upplandsgatan since that’s the door she noticed the boy disappearing through.”
While the fairytale form can seem so contrived and far removed from our world, it can be the best way to articulate real experiences—loneliness, longing, meaning, and purpose. Like the exaggerated drama of kabuki, the contrived form of the fairytale offers a form in which to explore what the world is really like. As one review put it, “Mio, My Son” is: “A magnificent, beautiful, and poetic tale that prompts the reader to contemplate life and death, good and evil, and the power of love.”
Lindgren’s book, like “The Little Grey Men,” benefitted from the New York Review Children’s Books republication endeavor.
