We are reintroduced to the children of the small town of Bullerbyn by youthful narrator Lisa. We follow them as they go to school, sing a couple of religiously themed songs, work on the land and eat their cookies. Lisa explains that she likes lambs better than puppies and kittens. Predictably one of them dies immediately after she says this, but that's about as dramatic as it gets in Bullerbyn. No wonder they only show this stuff at 8 am in the morning.
Having already covered summer and autumn in the first part, now it's time to move on to winter and spring. The whole class is sent home early because of the heavy snow. You may remember there are only six children in this village so all of them take shelter in a log cabin where a cranky old guy lives. But before anything scary happens, daddy comes along in his horse and wagon. Lisa's exciting Christmas consists of getting 3 tannenbaumen (und einer extra) and then waiting for her hair to change colour. You know that feeling when you are forced to watch someone else's home movies? This is exactly like that. When something finally does happen we are to numb to care: one of the six falls trough the ice. As soon as this dilemma is over they forget about it and never even tell their folks (who are never around anyway).
Lisa and pals are adamant to witness the arrival of the new year, but are disappointed when nothing happens. At least now they know what the audience feels like. So it's 1929 already and they go back to school to play tricks on their extremely gullible teacher. They seem to think they invented the old sticking a piece of paper on someones back trick. In fact, this is such a success that they repeat it at home and roll on the floor laughing for ten minutes straight. Life sure was good in those days without electricity and multi media.
When they are not playing by the forest waterfalls, Lisa likes to read a book to her old zombie of a granddad and babysit the new, seventh kid in town. Before you know it, they are celebrating easter already. One interesting bit is the revelation that Lisa liked to make up stories with her best friend Inge. Together they weave a tale of twin princesses (Goldriegen und Shlusselblumschen), complete with magical rabbits and kissable frogs. I wonder if Inge ever sued Astrid for copyright infringement?
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