Ronia, the Robber's Daughter

Ronia, the Robber's Daughter, by Astrid Lindgren

Swedish author Astrid Lindgren is the fourth most translated children's author, primarily for her popular Pippy Longstocking books, published in the 1940s. I was intrigued when I found Ronia, the Robber's Daughter, which was written over thirty years later when Lindgren was in her seventies. The English translation by Patricia Crampton won the 1984 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for Children's Literature in Translation and is an ALA Notable Book.

This is a wonderful story of a young headstrong girl named Ronia raised by the robber chief Matt and his understanding wife Lovis, who live with the twelve robbers of his band of thieves in an abandoned castle on top of a mountain deep in a Swedish forest populated by wild animals, harpies, gray dwarfs, and rumphogs. Being the only child in the robber castle, she is everyone's darling and loved most dearly by her father Matt. She is left to find her own adventures in the vast forest that surrounds them as the men are busy robbing and Lovia has a castle's full of work to handle.

All goes well until the day she meets and becomes friends with Birk the son of Matt's rival robber chief Borka. Then their inseparable friendship cause great disruption between the hostile robber camps. The book is the story of this disruption and how it is settled. The magical Swedish forest and the strong Swedish robbers provide a wonderful setting for this story of two children developing their relationship and its effect on the lives of those around them.