Astrid Lindgren
Astrid Lindgren (1907 - 2002) was a famous Swedish children's book author and screenwriter. Her best-known works include:
- The Pippi Longstocking series (Pippi Långstrump)
- Karlsson-on-the-Roof series (Karlsson på taket)
- Emil of Lönneberga (Emil i Lönneberga)
- The Bill Bergson series (Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist)
- Madicken
- Ronia the Robber's Daughter (Ronja rövardotter)
- Seacrow Island (Tjorven på Saltkråkan)
- The Six Bullerby Children / The Children of Noisy Village (Barnen i Bullerbyn)
- Mio, my Mio (also known as Mio, my Son) (Mio, min Mio)
- The Brothers Lionheart (Bröderna Lejonhjärta)
Children's rights and anti-cp activism
Children were always in the focus of Astrid Lindgren's work. Astrid Lindgren was well known both for her support for children's rights, and for her opposition to corporal punishment (see also the main article anti-spanking).
In 1978, Astrid Lindgren received the German Book Trade Peace Prize for her literary contributions. In acceptance, she told the following story.
When I was 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard practice at the time. But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking-the first of his life. And she told him that he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, ‘Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.’
All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view; that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery-one can raise children into violence. I think that too often we fail to feel situations from the child’s point of view and that failure leads us to teach our children other than what we think we’re teaching them.
– Astrid Lindgren, 1978 (source)
In 1993, she received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), "...For her commitment to justice, non-violence and understanding of minorities as well as her love and caring for nature."
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