Oh. Oh. Oh. This review breaks my heart, and it is wrong.
3 Stars – “The content is too old for kids in 2016. Too old school story.” (An Amazon Reviewer)
Confession: I am not a big fan of Pippi Longstocking, also by Astrid Lindgren. I love the charm of Lindgren’s writing but Pippi’s unconventional orientation to rules and order seems to inspire too much giddiness and “creativity” in my children (Read: creativity = naughtiness). I think that for some children, Pippi is just wonderfully adorable, much like Ramona Quimby. For mine, however, she seems to give high energy boys carte blanche to test my boundaries.
I wrongly presumed that Lindgren’s writing would all be like Pippi. Boy, did we miss out for a while because of my bull-headedness.
The Children of Noisy Village is about as endearing a story as you can get. Told from the perspective of a happy, well-loved little sister, living in Sweden, this story has timeless charm and beautiful little family vignettes. The cultural nuances of Swedish customs add a vibrancy that makes the story even more idyllic and delightful. Like the title implies, however, it is also well seasoned with humorous childish antics! Best of all, it is passionately pro-life, and the children spend much of their time playing with a blind and elderly grandfather and a poor neighbor.
The Children of Noisy Village follows the village children and their families through several seasons of traditional village life. From cutting Christmas trees, decorating Easter Eggs, playing on the walks from school, and little girls planning on running away (even though they don’t have any mean grownups to run away from), we quickly love these true-to-life children and their customs.
“As we were walking along, Britta took her book out of her schoolbag and smelled it. She let all of us smell it. New books smell so good that you can tell how much fun it’s going to be to read them.” Chapter 11
This darling book would make a lovely short read aloud for families who are new to reading aloud, are transitioning between bigger books, or are looking for something to take on a trip. The audiobook is also fantastic and would be great for car rides. My 5-and-7-year-olds listen to it regularly during the afternoon quiet hour.
One MAJOR word of WARNING! There is a Santa Claus spoiler in here
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This book looks so adorable! We will definitely be adding it to our list. Maybe even b/c of that Amazon review! We are currently reading Swallows and Amazons, which I had never read. I read through some of the reviews for it and I was amazed by the negative comments along those same lines. Do we need every children’s book to be modern and only have things in it that kids might be doing today?
Well said Jodi! What a small world we would have if our children only cared about modern settings! More importantly, what a handicap we would give them! The value in older children’s classics is rooted in the sameness of kids everywhere at all times – regardless of customs and setting. We want our children to see children of all time as their brothers and sisters.