How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Aren't your mother and father home?" asked Bloom.
"No," said Pippi. "They're gone. Completely gone." (8.29-30)
This one kind of makes us want to cry. Of course the robbers (Bloom and Thunder-Karlsson) have no way of knowing that Pippi is, in effect, an orphan, but we understand that when she says "gone," she means gone. For a moment at least, we feel like maybe the absence of a mom and a dad—a traditional family, so to speak—does leave Pippi alone in the world.
Quote #8
Then she had sat down in front of her chest and looked at all her birds' eggs and shells, and thought about the wonderful places where she and her father had collected them and about all the pleasant little shops all over the world where they had bought the beautiful things that were now in the drawers of her chest. (10.2)
Yep, that's Pippi's dad: gone (for now at least), but not forgotten. Not at all. Pippi takes great comfort in being amongst the things she and her father collected together, so even though he might be living as a cannibal king on a far away island for the time being, his presence is still felt. And still very important.
Quote #9
"We can't get out because someone has built a fire on the stairs," cried the older boy. He was five and his brother was a year younger. Their mother had gone out on an errand, and there they stood all alone. (10.11)
See what happens when kids are left at home alone without parental supervision? Kids that aren't Pippi, that is.