Like so many classic children's characters, Pippi Longstocking was born from a child's request for a story. While confined to her sickbed, young Karin Lindgren asked her mother, the adventurous Swedish journalist Astrid Lindgren, to tell her a story about Pippi Långstrump. Or, as we know her in English, Pippi Longstocking — a name that Karin pulled out of thin air and invented right there on the spot.