美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Missy Piggle-Wiggle' Brings Magical Cures To The Modern World

'Missy Piggle-Wiggle' Brings Magical Cures To The Modern World 

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Once upon a time, there was a strange little woman who lived in an upside-down house. Her name was Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and she was a combination of friend and therapist to all the children who lived in her small town. Betty MacDonald began to make up stories about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for her family in the 1940s, and those bedtime stories led to a series of classic children's books.

Now, Betty MacDonald's great-granddaughter has joined Ann M. Martin - who created the "Babysitter's Club" books - to kind of rework the series for modern readers. NPR's resident Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fan, Petra Mayer, reports.

PETRA MAYER, BYLINE 2: I loved those books when I was a little kid. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle smelled like sugar cookies. She kept her brown hair long so kids could comb it and play with it, kind of like the best My Little Pony 3 ever. She had chests of dress-up clothes and buried pirate treasure in the yard. And if you were a brat 4, she would set you straight.

All of the parents in that little fictional 5 town knew if your kid acted up, ask Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for one of her magical cures. My favorite was...

JEAN STAPLETON: (As Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle) The Radish Cure.

MAYER: What do you do with a little kid who won't take a bath? Just let her get dirty and dirtier. And when she's got about a quarter-inch of nice loam 6 going on, sneak 7 into her room at night and plant radishes all over her. When they sprout 8 - voila - your kid wants a bath. And bonus, you get a nice salad.

Of course, I was never a brat, but I sure loved to read about the Answer-Backers, the Fighter-Quarrelers, the Heedless Breakers and the Tattletales getting their gentle comeuppances.

MARGARET WILLISON: I think parents give it to their kids hoping that their kids will see the shortcomings described there and stop repeating them.

MAYER: That's librarian and book critic Margaret Willison who, like me, loved the books and, also like me, was never a brat.

WILLISON: I looked in as a judgey (ph) child and I did not see myself reflected, but I saw my annoying peers punished to the fullest extent of the law, and my heart thrilled in triumph.

MAYER: Betty MacDonald wrote four books about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle before she died in 1958. Her daughter Anne and brought out a fifth a few years ago based on an unpublished story. The original books are very of their time - lily-white families of stay-at-home moms, absent working dads and kids we'd call free-range, if we weren't calling the cops on their parents.

So how do you drag Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle into the 21st century? Well, to start with, you don't. In "Missy Piggle-Wiggle And The Whatever Cure," Mrs. P is off somewhere searching for her missing pirate husband. She's left her niece Missy in charge while she is away. Ann M. Martin wrote the new book along with Annie Parnell, who's MacDonald's great-granddaughter. They say the stories didn't actually need that much modernizing 9.

ANN M MARTIN: We didn't really update the stories because the quasi-magical feel of the town that they live in - we didn't really change that feel. I mean, Annie, jump in and...

ANNIE PARNELL: I agree, yeah - and I was going to say that, you know, the thing about raising kids today versus 10 raising kids 70 years ago, it's honestly not that different.

MAYER: The basic concerns are the same, Parnell says. How do your kids behave? How do they feel? How do they see the world? And Martin says there's still all kinds of fun stuff going on in the little upside-down house.

MARTIN: There are projects going on and they're putting on plays in their dressing 11 up. And yes, they're digging for pirate treasure in the yard. And I think that those sorts of things are just as appealing to kids today. It's just that we have to drag them away from their computers first and show it to them, and that's what Missy is able to do.

MAYER: There are a few key differences - cell phones and computers, and the big one for me, working moms. For Margaret Willison, there's one way in which "The Whatever Cure" could stand to be a little more modern - almost all the children who appear in the illustrations are white.

WILLISON: And I feel like that's a major thing. Like, that's a small thing that could have been done just a little bit better.

MAYER: That's a cure that might take a little longer than growing a radish, but this is just the first installment 12 in a planned series.

In the meantime - that's my copy of the book. Don't touch it. It's mine. Petra Mayer, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MRS. PIGGLE-WIGGLE")