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Comment by Markoff | Hacker News Reader

I like some of her books, but I am quite annoyed with kids most of the time coming from poor families with missing father/mother, it's like she couldn't write a book without some tragedy, of course the most famous Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are from normal families (there is probably reason why these are the most famous and beloved), but already Pippi Longstocking is pretty F-ed up and don't get me started on The Brothers Lionheart, which is glorifying suicide and should be really banned for kids under 15, certainly not appropriate for 9yo, though I read it to my younger kid with appropriate commentary.

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Remember that Astrid Lindgren was born in 1907, got pregnant at 18 and had to give up her son to a foster home for the first few years. She grew up in a completely different world, and it's no coincidence that a lot of her stories are basically about consoling traumatized children.

> She grew up in a completely different world,

Also, back then in 1925 infant mortality was probably ~10x worse [0], which adds to how we (today) might underestimate the prevalence of parent-child traumas.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?location...

I don't know why you are down voted. Death was so much more present in kids lives back then. Death from diseases and injuries so common. Kids having dead siblings entirely normal.

The writing of Charles Dickens support this thesis strongly!

I am familiar with her background she was sadly later projecting into many/most of her books. I am pretty sure vast majority of Swedish kids was growing back then in complete families without dead mother/father, same as they do nowadays regardless of marriage or divorce status.

Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are great books, the rest about traumatized kids/orphans not so much as kid books.

You are sure wast majority of kids had both parents same as today after WWI when childbirth was way more dangerous then today?

One of parents being dead was way more commom situation then it is today.

according google in 1925 85% Swedish kids were born to married parents

and

"Long-term cohort studies tracking historical Swedish registry data from the early-to-mid 1900s indicate that approximately 2.3% to 3.6% of children experienced the death of a biological parent before reaching adulthood (under 15 to 18 years of age)"

so less than 4% of the kids experienced parental death, absolute majority was born into regular complete families, my point was like half of the Lindgren characters are missing parent for whatever reason, not one in 20 books main characters, she was clearly projecting something unhealthy unrealistic into her books, if she was following reality it would be rare in her books and not that many if not majority of her characters are from incomplete families

What does it mean "according to google"? Google does not track historical demographic data. Like, use actual source.

Second 4% is actually a lot. In a class of 20 kids, one will have dead parent. That makes it something all kids growing during the era are aware of.

To me it suggest it should be expected for some writers to write about this group.

it is not that much, it means if she had 25 (4% is 1 in 25, not 1 in 20) main characters, one of them should have dead parent if she would reflect the reality and didn't have some orphan/death fetish with significant number (way way more than 1 in 25 or even 1 in 10) of her characters being orphans/foster/neglected kids

The "if you show a minority in your book, their number must not exceed their exact demographic share" rule would make it impossible to write about any minority.

> if she would reflect the reality and didn't have some orphan/death fetish

The aggressive hostility toward writing about non-majority is super weird.

As a Swede, I can't read the Emil books because of fremdscham for the parents from those scenes where Emil feels the need to run to the carpentry shed.

The farmer class could actually be like this, before we banned it, even though she tries to write about it in a comical way, but it was always a low class thing to punish ones children and to read stories where it happens is basically intolerable at least to me.

Astrid Lindgren probably knew this though. She isn't some idiot who puts this in as comic relief, it's comic but there's a serious and intolerable feel to it too. She knows she's portraying something bad and she intends for us readers to sit with the dissonance-- the low class going-to-punish-his-children aspect, the family's love for Emil, that book in which his mother writes down what he does, that Emil is well-meaning, that everything goes well in the end and that the adult Emil becomes a nämndeman, etc.

Astrid Lindgren is one of the scariest Swedish authors because of her deliberate careful and nuanced use of moral dissonance. She's scarier than Willem Fredrik Hermans.

>>which is glorifying suicide

I've literally re-read it this year again and I couldn't disagree more, like, to a point where I wonder if we even read the same book. That book made me scared of dying when I was a child, and it made me appreciate the finality of death again now that I'm a grown up. There's nothing there that "glorifies" suicide - we could have a meta 2026 conversation about whether it's trying to say that yes, terminally ill people _should_ be able to decide what they want to do with their own lives, but that's not the message the book is going for(imho) - it's about bravery and loyalty even through the darkest of times, and about sacrifice(not suicide!!!) that comes from standing up for what you believe for. I don't personally believe in afterlife, but just as much as I loved the idea of naningalia when I was a child I still love it now - it gives children hope that even in the darkest moments of despair, there is something better waiting for them. The main character literally dies of ilness at the start, being bed bound for a long time without his loving brother and mother who doesn't know how to help him. The fact that he chooses to join Johnatan at the end in the trip to the "next" level of afterlife couldn't be further from glorifying suicide.

I read it this year to kids and the book says basically - no biggie, there is no death, you commit suicide to move to another level to be with your brother, you can't lose him, you have infinite lives in this videogame called Life.

And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as death, after each death you just move to another level.

So there is no risk at all you will lose your brother/relative, very F up thing to teach the kids, exactly opposite from what should make them scared of dying which is PERMANENT and there is no next level, where you can be with your family again.

That's such a dishonest read of the book I don't actually know what to say. To me, joining Johnathan at the end is the conclusion of the entire book of love, loyalty and bravery. Nowhere does it say "meh, no biggie just kill yourself". If that's the message you took from it then I strongly encourage you to sit down one evening and read it again. The biggest "proof" of it not being treated lightly is obviously all the inhabitants of the valley of cherries enduring, surviving and fighting against oppression instead of as "just killing themselves" to go to the next level. Even at the end Johnathan makes it sound like it's a rumour and maybe there is something there, but no one knows for sure, same as naningalia was at the beginning - people hope there is a better afterlife, but that's all it is - hope.

The "dishonest read" is a strange accusation. I think I was about 11 or 12 when I read the book and my reaction was - "err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly? Well thats a bit dumb". I did like the story though and reread the book later several times, but the suicide bits felt always so weird.

Dishonest as in - it requires ignoring 99% of the book and focusing on the last couple pages, ignoring the entire struggle, bravery and sacrifice that lead to that moment.

>>err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly

Well so your 12 year old self I guess missed the part where Johnathan was mortally wounded and about to die. The fact that Karl decides to join him in death is not a glorification of suicide, and I don't know how it could possibly be read that way. There's literally nothing willy-nilly about it - again, it doesn't appear to be some well known fact or even a fact at all that there is another "level" beyond that one - it's a guess, a hope at best. And Karl decides to jump with his dearest brother because(as made incredibly explicit multiple times throughout the entire book) - he loves him more than anything in the world and cannot imagine parting with him again. You make it sound like a video game where characters go "meh, let's try again" - it's absolutely not so. Before he died the first time, Karl wasn't sure if Johnathan was telling the truth about afterlife or if he wanted to just make him feel better in his ilness - and now that Johnathan was mortally wounded, Karl knew that only bravery and hope and love for the people you care about is worth living(and dying) for. That's what the book is about.

In my first comment I even made this explicit - I said that as an adult, this book makes me appreciate the finality of death - and you might ask, how is that so, given that in this world it looks like you can just keep dying over and over again only to go to higher planes of existence. And the answer is simple - with every death, you lose everything except for hope. Hope that you are going to wake up again in a better world and that the people you love will still be there. But you don't know. In my personal life I don't believe in it - but for children, this is the greatest gift - hope. Especially struggling ones that see no bright path anywhere - hope is all they have. And as you can tell, for majority of the book the hope was "we can win persevere against hardship and evil" and not "we can kill ourselves and hope the next world is better".

”…the book says basically - no biggie, there is no death“

So does the Bible.

But Christians make a special exception for suicide. You can be forgiven if you kill anyone but yourself.

You can even be rewarded for committing the right genocide.

Kids do think about death. Hiding or avoiding the discussion does nothing. My kids absolutely adored Brothers Lionheart.

Have you read the book or your kids just read it without you knowing what is it about?

This book says basically - no biggie, there is no death, you commit suicide to move to another level to be with your brother, you can't lose him, you have infinite lives in this videogame called Life. And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as permanent death/separation from your loved ones, after each death you just move to another level. That's really F up thing to teach small kids, who should know death is permanent.

Yes I have read it. Kids are not retarded.

I think you miss the point of this book. Karl had tuberculosis, Jonathan died saving him from a fire despite knowing Karl would soon die (which he did). No suicide there, only tragedy. Then they had an "afterlife" which is full of the adventure they wished they had when they were alive - which also means that there's some serious darkness there to fight, so not heaven by any means. In the end, Karl gets to do for Jonathan essentially what he did for him, and they're ready to move on. They didn't commit suicide, they were already dead. I don't think a single Swedish kid killed themselves over misunderstanding this book, they didn't miss the part that the brothers really treasured life and it was a tragedy that they died in the first chapter.

I didn't appreciate Pippi Longstocking fully until I read Stieg Larsson's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Occasionally covers are better than the original song.

It's perhaps no coincidence that the opening theme song of the Fincher (Mara/Craig) version of the movie is an outstanding cover of "The Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin.

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