How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Her dress was rather unusual. Pippi herself had made it. She had meant it to be blue, but there wasn't quite enough blue cloth, so Pippi had sewed little red pieces on it here and there. (1.12)
How many nine-year-olds do you know who can design and sew their own clothes? For that matter, how many fifteen-year-olds? Twenty-five-year-olds? Forty-year-olds? It's not an easy task, and Pippi's doing it without the necessary material, which means she has to improvise on the spot to make it work.
Quote #2
When the pancake was brown on one side she tossed it halfway up to the ceiling, so that it turned right around in the air, and then she caught it on the griddle again. And when it was ready she threw it straight across the kitchen right onto a plate that stood on the table.
[…]
And Tommy and Annika ate and thought it a very good pancake. (1.42-44)
Pippi's got some mad kitchen skills—minus, perhaps, the cleaning-up skill. But still, we're impressed with her ability to make pancakes from scratch and flip 'em like a pro. She could definitely have a future as a short-order cook.
Quote #3
Pippi could work fast, she could. Tommy and Annika sat and watched how she went through the dough, how she threw the cookies onto the cookie pans, and swung the pans into the oven. They thought it was as good as a circus. (2.16)
Without a single day of cooking school (or any school at all), Pippi could probably hold her own in a diner or bakery, or—if she does meat—maybe one of those flaming Hibachi restaurants. People go through years of education and apprenticeships to master these sorts of cooking-as-performance-art abilities, but Pippi seems to have it down before she hits her teens. Or her tweens.