But by then she had rediscovered the joy of writing.

She sent the manuscript to a publisher, who turned it down. It wasn't until Lindgren was bedridden with a badly twisted ankle that she decided to put the stories on paper and give them to her daughter. Right there and then Lindgren made up a tale of the strongest girl in the world who feared nothing and no one, had a bag full of gold coins and carried a monkey called Mr. I asked her what about, and she said `about Pippi Longstocking.' So I did,' Lindgren later wrote. 'Karin was ill and asked me to tell her a fairy-tale. ive years later she married Sture Lindgren and in 1934 the couple had a daughter, Karin, who was the real inventor of Pippi Longstocking. Unwed and pregnant at age 19, she left her shocked community in Vimmerby for the capital, Stockholm, where she had a son, went to secretary school and got a job in an office. 14, 1907, the daughter of a farmer in Smaaland, a hilly wooded province in southern Sweden. Lindgren was born Astrid Ericsson on Nov. That is the theme in some of her most beloved classic novels, like the 1954 'Mio, My Son,' in which a fatherless and lonely boy fights evil in the mysterious Land Far Away, and the 1973 'The Brothers Lionheart,' in which young Rusky proves himself just as courageous as his elder bother. She taught her readers, child or adult, that you can be brave even if you're scared. She wrote about evil, death and fear in a straightforward but tender way.

Though Lindgren excelled in playful storytelling, she didn't avoid difficult matters. 'I write to amuse the child within me and can only hope that other children may have some fun that way too,' Lindgren once wrote.

Astrid lindgren longstocking