About Annie

About Annie

As a child, Annie Barrows was famous for being good. Very good. Abnormally good. Grownups were always talking about it, mostly in comparison to their own, less-good children. According to grownups, Annie was polite, responsible, mature, and sweet-tempered. Actually, she was none of these things. She was just quiet, so they thought she was polite, responsible, mature, and sweet-tempered, which tells you a thing or two about grownups. The reason she was quiet was that she was reading, and honestly, you can’t do very many bad things while you’re reading. Nobody can rob a bank while reading.

Despite her outward goodness, Annie always liked bad children. Even when she was a kid, sitting quietly in a corner, reading a book, she was always rooting for the biggest hooligan in class. And when she grew up, she married one.

He’s okay now, of course. He’s completely respectable. If you met him, you would never guess how many bad things he did before he was twelve. (Message from Annie’s husband: “I never did anything mean. I never hurt anyone’s feelings.”) While the bad things caused him a lot of trouble at the time, now that they’re over, they have become really good stories. These stories—except for one or two that are so bad they can’t be in a book—are the inspiration for Iggy and his adventures.