“Of course the reason that all the children in our town like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is because Mrs. Piggle Wiggle likes them. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle like children, she enjoys talking to them and best of all they do not irritate her.”
-first paragraph of Betty MacDonald’s “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic”
What “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic” lacks in highfalutin language and narrative sophistication, author Betty MacDonald makes up for with charm. The opening page is worth quoting in full:
When Molly O’Toole was looking at the colored pictures in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s big dictionary and just happened to be eating a candy cane at the same time and drooled candy cane juice on the colored pictures of gems and then forgot and shut the book so the pages all stuck together, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle didn’t say, “Such a careless little girls can never ever look at the colored pictures in my big dictionary again.” Nor did she say, “You must never look at books when you are eating.” She said, “Let’s see, I think we can steam those pages apart, and then we can wipe the stickiness off with a little soap and water, like this—now see, it’s just as good as new. There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book. Don’t look so embarrassed, Molly, I almost drool every time I look at those gems—which one is your favorite?—I think mine is the Lapis Lazuli.”
What a charming person is Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle! Purely fictional, of course, but loosely based on MacDonald’s own mother. The children’s chapter book about the eccentric lady healer involves frustrated parents getting terrifying and magical medicines to scare their children into acting more politely and being less annoying. From the siblings who always tattle to the girl who refuses to bathe, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has a solution, often with predictably hilarious results.
In the end, like many children’s stories, the adult can see that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is not rich or admired by the other adults. A widow in constrained circumstances, chronically underpaid for her magical cures and often entertaining an entire neighborhood of children, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is forced to scrounge around her house looking for money that her eccentric husband hid in hard-to-find secret compartments. In the view of children, boring and poor retired people can become fascinating companions in the mundane miracles of daily living.
What does any of this have to do with the real world?
There are those rare people who can respond to children with patient amusement. The messes and missteps of the very young do tend to be quite predictable, so we can see where things are going and plan accordingly. Lavish wealth and flashy accomplishments are not required to impress young children and win their hearts.
In our current age, it is all too common for parents and intentionally childless adults to complain about children. They are dirty and loud, annoying and uneducated. They are emotionally immature—which makes sense because they are, in general, immature. Complaining about all these obvious facets of small children is just so tiresome.
I’ve observed that the children who gush over the cuteness of babies and can comfortably crack jokes with three-year-olds often have mothers who do the same. Complaining about children, referring to your own child contemptuously as “that one,” and getting irritated by every mess and inconvenience does nothing to make the world more pleasant and beautiful for us who inhabit it. Personally, I enjoy works of fiction like “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” because, however overly exaggerated and ludicrous is the set up, I am legitimately inspired to be more patient with children.
Reading books about adults who cherish children is a salve to the world-weary soul. Young people are not just noisy messes to be dealt with but fleeting stages of human development to be enjoyed. Take the more interesting approach: Enjoy and appreciate little children.
