Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip - Book Two by Tove Jansson

by Tove Jansson

Brand New. Will be shipped from US.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

About the author

Tove Jansson was born and died in Helsinki, Finland. As a Finnish citizen whose mother tongue was Swedish, she was part of the Swedish-speaking Finns minority. Thus, all her books were originally written in Swedish.

Although known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance.

Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), during World War II. She said later that the war had depressed her, and she had wanted to write something naive and innocent. Besides the Moomin novels and short stories, Tove Jansson also wrote and illustrated four original and highly popular picture books.

Jansson's Moomin books have been translated into 33 languages.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second volume in the omnibus compilations of newspaper strips about the Moomins which Tove Jansson wrote for a British newspaper in the 1950's. The first volume has a hilarious and witty story arc where the Moomin family moves to the French Riviera where they attempt to impress the old money families of the area, but is for the most part full of episodic storytelling and behaviour by the protagonists that today feels jarringly out-of-character.

This 2nd volume continues the series finding its feet, containing several great story arcs that build upon the social satire found in the "Moomins on the Riviera" storyline. The first starts with the Moomin Family getting bored hibernating in the winter, going skiing outside which leads to Mymble and Snorkmaiden competing to impress an egotistic and arrogant ski champion whom both are infatuated with. (to Moomin's great distress)

Next arc sees the Moomins hire a maid because their neighbour Mrs. Fillyjonk is disgusted by how chaotic and disorderly their house is, despite the Moomins themselves having no problems thriving there. Even more hilarious yet poignant tragicomedy (a mode of storytelling Tove Jansson excelled at like few others) results when the maid they hired turns out to be terminally depressed as a result of feeling she isn't as successful in her career as they should.

Arc number three focuses on Moomin and Snorkmaiden attempting to build their own house. This arc also contains the first appearance of Little My, one of my favourite characters in the Moomin universe. The above mentioned Mymble, whom I previously thought was an early version of Little My, turns out to instead be Little My's aunt. The newspaper comic strip is perhaps the one incarnation of the Moomins where Mymble is more prominent as a character than Little My.

The fourth and final arc is also quite funny. Its plot revolves around a self-declared prophet arriving in the Moominvalley, whose inhabitants end up being infatuated by his idiosyncratic philosophy hence attempting to follow his teachings to the letter while missing the overall spirit behind them. Things get even more convoluted when the other characters' disillusionment with the prophet leads them to embrace another self-declared prophet in the area, who preaches a set of dogma polar opposite to the other prophet. This story I find quite interesting because it hilariously satirises new religious movements of the type that I thought did not become this prominent in popular culture until the 1960's at the earliest. Perhaps it did and Tove Jansson was just very ahead of her time?