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, BYLINE²: 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 Pony³ ever. She had chests of dress-up clothes and buried pirate treasure in the yard. And if you were a brat⁴, she would set you straight.

All of the parents in that little fictional⁵ 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 loam⁶ going on, sneak⁷ into her room at night and plant radishes all over her. When they sprout⁸ - 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 Her daughter Anne and brought out a fifth a few years ago based on an unpublished story.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 modernizing⁹.

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 versus¹⁰ 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 dressing¹¹ 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 installment¹² 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")

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 pony   

adj.小型的；n.小马

参考例句：

• His father gave him a pony as a Christmas present.他父亲给了他一匹小马驹作为圣诞礼物。
• They made him pony up the money he owed.他们逼他还债。

4 brat   

n.孩子；顽童

参考例句：

• He's a spoilt brat.他是一个被宠坏了的调皮孩子。
• The brat sicked his dog on the passer-by.那个顽童纵狗去咬过路人。

5 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

6 loam   

n.沃土

参考例句：

• Plant the seeds in good loam.把种子种在好的壤土里。
• One occupies relatively dry sandy loam soils.一个则占据较干旱的沙壤土。

7 sneak   

vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行

参考例句：

• He raised his spear and sneak forward.他提起长矛悄悄地前进。
• I saw him sneak away from us.我看见他悄悄地从我们身边走开。

8 sprout   

n.芽，萌芽；vt.使发芽，摘去芽；vi.长芽，抽条

参考例句：

• When do deer first sprout horns?鹿在多大的时候开始长出角？
• It takes about a week for the seeds to sprout.这些种子大约要一周后才会发芽。

9 modernizing   

使现代化，使适应现代需要( modernize的现在分词 )； 现代化，使用现代方法

参考例句：

• Modernizing a business to increase its profitability and competitiveness is a complicated affair. 使企业现代化，从而达到增加利润，增强竞争力的目的，是一件复杂的事情。
• The young engineer had a large share in modernizing the factory. 这位年轻工程师在工厂现代化的过程中尽了很大的“力”。

10 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

11 dressing   

n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料

参考例句：

• Don't spend such a lot of time in dressing yourself.别花那么多时间来打扮自己。
• The children enjoy dressing up in mother's old clothes.孩子们喜欢穿上妈妈旧时的衣服玩。

12 installment   

n.(instalment)分期付款；(连载的)一期

参考例句：

• I shall soon pay the last installment of my debt.不久我将偿付我的最后一期债款。
• He likes to buy things on the installment plan.他喜欢用分期付款法购买货物。