January talking meme

[scripsi]

verdande_mi asked: Favourite Swedish children's book?

It's always so hard to pick favourites! But after some consideration I think it must be a book, or rather three books by Astrid Lindgren. It’s very likely you know about this author and may very well have read something by her, like the books about Pippi Longstocking. But my favourites are the books about Bill Bergson, which probably are among her less known works, even in Sweden. Lindgren worked for a Doctor in Criminology during a period and the result became the books about the boy detective Bill Bergson (In Swedish Kalle Blomqvist); Bill Bergson, Master Detective (1946), Bill Bergson Lives Dangerously (1951) and Bill Bergson and the White Rose Rescue (1953).

ANd why do I love them. Well, first because they are very fun books, apart from the detective element. The book takes place during three summers, in the first Bill is thirteen years old. He and his friends are playing a game, inspired by The War of the Roses. He, a boy named Anders and a girl called Eva-Lotta (not sure what they are called in the translation) are The White Roses and three other boys are The Red Roses. They spy on each other,”duels” and try to steal each other’s important papers or a funnily shaped stone they have decided is a mystical object. The rule is that the group having the stone has to give the others clues on where it is to be found. This backstory is charming and the friendship between the children are wonderfully depicted. Bill is a dreamer, Eva-Lotta has a more straightforward approach and Anders is the leader. And though most of the children have secure middle class backgrounds, Anders comes from a poor background and has a father who is both drunk and abusive. In many ways the little town they live in is idyllic, but as an adult you realise that even so, Lindgren give hints that not everyone are kind and wonderful there.

These books have had an impact on children in Sweden in the way they play. When I grew up we played “Redwhite Roses” without knowing the game is sprung from these books. You play it like this: Form two teams. Team A closes their eyes and count two one hundred while team B hides a designated “treasure” and then hides themselves. Team A then has to find and capture members of team B for “Interrogation”. A captive must gives three clues to the treasure, two false and one true and after that s/he is allowed to escape and hide again. This goes on until the treasure is found and then the team switches. I can tell you this was a hugely popular game in my pre-teens when they teams were usually divided between boys and girls. you know, boys was icky, but if you had to chase and capture them, you had an excellent excuse to actually holding a boy’s hand. :)

Also, though Lindgren didn’t invent it, she popularized “The Robber Language”, the secret language the White Roses uses to communicate with each other. It’s quite simple, every consonant is doubled and you put a o in between. So scripsi would be soscocroripopsosi, for example. Written it’s quite easy to dechiffre, but when you speak it, especially when you can do it fast, a person who doesn’t know the secret is pretty clueless..

But I digress here, because these books really are detective stories. And they are not the kind of formulaic detective stories most of us read as kids. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, all builds on a similar formula. The Bill Bergson books has a vastly different plot in each book. In the first an old man is murdered and Eva-Lotta sees the murderer just before he commits the act, making her a target. in the second book a cousin to Eva-Lotta’s mother unexpectedly comes to visit. He is a rather unpleasant fellow, but even if the kids don’t like him, only Bill suspect there is something fishy going on. And he is right!. And in the last book the White Roses accidentally witness the kidnapping of a scientist and his small son and with no opportunity to call the police, follows them.

What makes these books so remarkable is that Lindgren makes her character’s real and especially Bill develops in the books. In the first book he dreams of being a detective and often disappears into a fantasy where he explains his brilliant sleuthing for an admiring invisible listener. His friends often makes a little good natured fun of him, but he also is intelligent and resourceful and really help solving the murder in the first book. And he also realises that murders in reality are awful and frightening, not just a mental exercise. In the last book the invisible listener is gone and Bill has a much more realistic approach. And the villains are real too. The murdered in the first book isn’t evil. He is desperate and afraid and that is what drives him to kill and then to try to kill Eva-Lotta. Cousin Einar in the second book is a liar and a coward who has managed to get himself into more trouble he can handle. And the villain in the last book, a man who has no problems in kidnapping and threatening a small child, or beat a teenager half to death, is probably one of the first psychopath in a Swedish detective story and he is terrifying!

I love these books for so many reasons and I can recommend them. They are a quick read, they are meant for children after all, but they are exciting too! Also, it was in these books I first heard the names of Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey!

Comments

[the_rck]

I adored these books when I was a kid. I read The White Rose Rescue over and over again. (I was very lucky. The library where we lived had all three books. I'm in the US, so it wasn't necessarily likely.) I own the first and the third, but I haven't managed to find a copy of Bill Bergson Lives Dangerously. That last is probably because I haven't looked for it online. I should do that now...

Thank you for reminding me about these. I'll have to dig out the ones I do have and reread them.

[flo_nelja]

I haven't read these books, I don't think thay have been translated in French, but I love Astrid Lindgren and they seel cool !

[ardyforshort]

I LOVE Kalle Blomqvist so much! I read the books as a kid and i think i saw a b/w movie of one at some point? I had no idea it was this influential in Swedish culture, that was really interesting!