Astrid Lindgren is without doubt the most famous and influential Swedish children's author in the world. A rare combination of great popular appeal and high literary quality have led her fellow countrymen to call her their premier export product, and with sales of her books ranging in the millions, this designation is not unmerited. Her first book, Pippi Långstrump (1945; translated as Pippi Longstocking, 1945), brought Lindgren instant fame; long a touchstone of children's literature, it has been translated into more than sixty languages--from Arabic to Zulu. During her long career Lindgren has received many prestigious Scandinavian and international awards, especially for her fiction. In 1958 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal--known widely as the children's literature version of the Nobel Prize. Because of the quality of her work and the fact that many of her later books transcend age-specific audiences, Lindgren has received awards normally reserved for...