Astrid Lindgren's Noisy Village series was one of my favourites when I was a little girl (well actually, the German language translation, where the village, the hamlet is known as Bullerbü). When I was a child, I just felt and knew that I absolutely adored the sweet and enchanting episodical nuggets of carefree childhood in a turn of the century Swedish village (actually, less than a village even, but three interconnected farms). Now, rereading this series for the first time in decades, I can truly appreciate and understand how simply wonderful the first-person narrative of seven year old Lisa really is. Astrid Lindgren has so perfectly captured the innocent, but also astute voice of an imaginative and observant child (the voice sounds authentic and never artificial, like how an actual child should sound and not an adult author writing as a child, or more to the point, pretending to be a child).
With such a glowing preamble, why then only two stars? It has NOTHING to do with the story itself, and EVERYTHING to do with Florence Lamborn's translation, or rather what has been changed and is missing in the translation. Not only are the episodes arranged rather haphazardly, there are episodes in the second book (in this translation) that in the German edition I read (and likely also in the Swedish original, but that is speculation on my part) appear in books one and three. But even more of an issue is the fact that there are numerous episodes, numerous chapters which do not appear at all, which have seemingly been entirely omitted (expunged) by the translator. And that, at least for me, is not only flabbergasting but also totally unacceptable, and for me, a massive insult to both Astrid Lindgren and her legacy as a children's author.
This whole (to me) fiasco does make me wonder at the reasons why certain chapters have been omitted in their entirety (actually almost nine of them, as far as I can tell) and the more I consider the possibilities, the more silly these reasons seem and the more perplexed and even livid I tend to become. It is beyond the scope of and for this review show a detailed list and analysis of the omitted chapters and why (or at least possibly why) Florence Lamborn has chosen to not include them in her translation(s), but suffice it to say that I firmly believe that the chapter where Lasse (or rather Karl in the Noisy Village translations) pretends to be a water sprite has been left out because Karl is briefly nude (oh horror). This is such a fun and in all ways innocent chapter, but I guess American prudishness considers it offensive in some way (come on, the boy is naked for something like one sentence, and all that is stated is that Karl sits on a rock in his proverbial birthday suit, playing a pipe, pretending to be a water sprite). Frankly, it is high time for an updated English language translation of this series, and one that keeps the episodes in order of appearance and does NOT omit entire chapters, entire episodes!