Author(s): Barbro Lindgren

Junior Fiction

This classic Swedish novel is an absurd tale full of playful nonsense in a world where anything can happen. This glorious mix of Spike Milligan with Pippi Longstocking is like the Swedish Winnie the Pooh.

There's a sublime sort of craziness to it that catches me unawares every time. Neither Soda Pop nor Mazarin nor Dartanyong speaks a single word of sense, but they will be my friends for life - Astrid Lindgren

This is the most wonderful, ridiculous, completely and utterly bonkers book I have read in a very long time. A Swedish classic, first published in 1969, it will make you wonder how much better your childhood could have been if only it had been translated earlier. I envy the kids who will get to read it now.

Soda Pop (Loranga in the original Swedish) and his son Mazarin live in the countryside with Soda Pop's dad Dartanyong - although Dartanyong only rarely believes he is Dartanyong; he is more often a plumber, a trapeze artist and, on one occasion, a dog. Dartanyong's grandad lives in the forest and thinks he's a cuckoo, and there's a giraffe living in the rubbish heap that likes to eat beds. In the first adventure, Mazarin is sitting on the roof of the flooded garage, dangling his feet in the water and watching herring swim in and out of the windows of his dad's car, when a whole swarm of tigers arrives.

So come sing some pop songs with Soda Pop, eat shocky poodling and cripped weem with Mazarin, play a bit of broomstick hockey with a squishy orange and feed hotdogs to the tigers in the barn. It's going to be fun.

- Lucy