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A review by katykelly
The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren
5.0
100 pages of nostalgia from the author of Pippi Lockstocking. The children of Noisy Village are six children living on three adjacent farms in a hamlet in Sweden.
One of them narrates these short tales from their year - from making maps and caves in the hayloft in the summer to struggling through miles of snow to get home at Christmas.
The boys and girls are fairly typical - they like adventures and playing pretend, picking strawberries, dressing up, sometimes they prefer to play apart, but they are also good friends.
As an editor notes at the end, the episode involving stealing eggs from nests and blowing them woudl these days be both illegal and considered in a very different light to back in the 1940s, but I'm glad it was left in - it's good to be able to share such acts and explain how times have changed.
For an adult, though I have never even visited Sweden, this has a lovely wistful feel to it, of childhoods past and village life in a time before technology, of innocence and children making their own fun.
Chapters are very short, and it would be perfect for bedtime reading with a 5-7 year old, so parents can talk about the differences between now and then, the children's lives and their own. A couple of issues would raise questions - the egg blowing for one, and also the chapter involving an abused dog.
Times may change, but children don't, and this is a lovely collection of short adventures to show today's children what their grandparents young lives (or those of their contemporaries) may have been like.
One of them narrates these short tales from their year - from making maps and caves in the hayloft in the summer to struggling through miles of snow to get home at Christmas.
The boys and girls are fairly typical - they like adventures and playing pretend, picking strawberries, dressing up, sometimes they prefer to play apart, but they are also good friends.
As an editor notes at the end, the episode involving stealing eggs from nests and blowing them woudl these days be both illegal and considered in a very different light to back in the 1940s, but I'm glad it was left in - it's good to be able to share such acts and explain how times have changed.
For an adult, though I have never even visited Sweden, this has a lovely wistful feel to it, of childhoods past and village life in a time before technology, of innocence and children making their own fun.
Chapters are very short, and it would be perfect for bedtime reading with a 5-7 year old, so parents can talk about the differences between now and then, the children's lives and their own. A couple of issues would raise questions - the egg blowing for one, and also the chapter involving an abused dog.
Times may change, but children don't, and this is a lovely collection of short adventures to show today's children what their grandparents young lives (or those of their contemporaries) may have been like.