Moominland Meets Middle Earth

[tmcg]

Tove Jansson illustrated a 1962 Finnish edition of The Hobbit! I had no idea. This is so cool! Finding out that van Gogh (or maybe Ed Koren) did a series of paintings based on Beowulf would carry similar delight, or discovering a set of El Grecos (or maybe George Booths) illustrating Le Morte d'Arthur. Thanks, memepool.

Tove Jansson, who died last year, was a Finnish author who wrote and illustrated some of my very favorite children's books. They're populated by quirky, charming creatures, and combine commonsense and sense of wonder in the same way I love in Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. Their delights, an inextricable weave of text and illustration, owe as much to Jansson's unique drawing style as to her writing style (which I've experienced only through translation). If Edward Gorey were sweeter, if Maurice Sendak were leaner...well, they still wouldn't be Tove Jansson, but maybe that starts to give an idea.

Charlie Boatner (one of the Friends of Lulu) sent me the start of a Moomins links list a while ago (and if I'd read the bios all the way through, I'd have known that she illustrated The Hobbit and also Alice's Adventures in Wonderland--sigh). Here's another bio of Jansson with a picture of her. Here's one Moomin homepage (with icons, gadgets, multimedia, and all kinds of stuff I'm not sure I like that much) and another Moomin homepage.

The best way to experience Moominland, of course, is through the books. It's hard to pick favorites, but Finn Family Moomintroll is a good place to start, and I have a particular fondness for Comet in Moominland and Moominland Midwinter. And this is freaky: Those, in that order, were the three most popular titles returned when I just did a Tove Jansson author search at Booksamillion.com so that I could link them here.

Comments

[akaspeedo.livejournal.com]

Did you have the picture book Moomin, Mymble and Littel My? It was gorgeous,and the re-issued it a few years back. That's the first one I remember reading. At the end of each page it asked: "What do you think happened then?" and had a cut-out so you could see something strange from the next page.

The hattifatteners stick out in my memory for some reason *g*.

[akaspeedo.livejournal.com]

Pre-coffee typos. Sorry!

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I never had that one! I've got to add it to the collection.