This is my first post on my book review/reading list blog. I'm right now reading "Moominland Midwinter" by Tove Janssen.I re-discovered Moominvalley while looking around in a Japanese stationery shop - very surprising to see that they had at least two different sets of Moomin notepaper.
Our Finnish LT tester visiting at work confirmed that Moomins are still very popular in their native Finland and in Japan.
I have four books checked out from the library right now and this is the last of them - the other three already devoured were "Tales of Moominvalley," "Moominpappa's Memoirs" and "Moominland Midsummer."
In "Moominland Midwinter," Moomintroll unexpectedly wakes up from his winter's hibernation and finds a odd snowy world - with few others awake except for Little My, the tiny Mymble, Too-ticky, and Snufkin, who is far away to the south. (He leaves every fall to migrate south - Moomintroll is trying to follow him).
Although I've already read most of these books before, I'm still surprised by various twists and turns and ingenious details that Ms. Janssen pops into these stories.
Also, having talked to some friends who are interested in writing and illustrating children's books - it sounds like these days people who can and want to both write and illustrate, as Ms. Janssen did, are soundly discouraged. Books like this could be a rarity in the future....
Unfortunately Tove Janssen passed away in 2001 at the age of 86.
1 comment:
I thought that Moominland was some trippy childhood dream, like that the first nightmare that I remember when I was in a glass-bottom boat with the gang from Scooby-Doo and a shark bites my foot somehow through the glass (?!) and I woke up because I felt something grab my foot in real life.
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