The Moomins and the Great Flood

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The first words written about Moominvalley, quoted at the beginning of this text, reveal that one cannot fully understand “The Moomins and the Great Flood” and its deepest tones and layers without understanding the time and the world Tove Jansson created it in. The magic in discovering the safe and beautiful Moominvalley comes from the contrast, the uncertainty that defined the flood, and the quest to find Moominpappa.

And after now after having read The Moomins and the Great Flood, I can certainly and very much understand why this novel (which is considered the first Moomin tale and was orignally published in 1945, and was also for decades out of print even in its Swedish original), has only recently been translated (the simple fact being that although author and illustrator Tove Jansson's accompanying pictorial images are indeed glowingly descriptive, esoteric and for all intents and purposes wonderful, the actual text, the actual featured narrative, the story of The Moomins and the Great Flood is simply, is just not in any way en par with the other Moomin novels). For the text feels majorly choppy, uneven and often so bare bones that one might almost assume one is reading more of an outline of a novel than an actual and finished, polished end product. I mean, we as readers never really do manage to obtain all that much knowledge and information as to exactly why Moominpapa has ended up being missing. Yes, he has seemingly abandoned his family (his wife and young son) to travel with the Hatifatners, but no detailed and specific reasons as to why are ever really textually given. And even the Great Flood itself is at least in my opinion rather a non event, is presented by Jansson as being there, being a presence, but with only scant description and portrayal (which also and indeed seems to be the case with almost all of the diverse episodes of The Moomins and the Great Flood, the featured and presented nuggets of detail and of even storytelling charm, pieces of information that seem important for a short while but then like a flame, sputtering out, failing to coalesce into a harmonious whole). These are Jansson's own drawings, printed in their original hues, with all their humour and mystery shining through. It took six years, until the end of the war, for The Moomins and the Great Flood to be published, but when it was, Jansson described it as her "very first happy ending". How happy she would have been to see this glorious edition, I can only imagine. Jansson created books that are unlike any others written for children or adults, though Roald Dahl was surely tipping his Scandinavian hat to her when he produced Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Nineteen years earlier, in 1945, Jansson had created a confectionery landscape in her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, with snow ice-cream, finespun sugar grass and chocolate-bearing trees. it's just a wonderful, magical book in which all the moominroots can be seen and it is charming and sweet but also very dark, as all the best children's books are. The Moomins and the Great Flood was the first Moomins book Tove Jansson published in 1945. It was to be followed by another eight novels and short story collections as well as three illustrated picture books. I recently reread Moominpappa at Sea and acquired all eight books in the series in a beautiful hardcover collectors’ edition published by Sort of Books. The Moomins and the Great Flood, however, was mostly out of print until 1991 when it was reprinted in Scandinavia. My edition reproduces Tove Jansson’s preface to that edition, in which she explains that she began the story at the beginning of the Second World War.D+Q to publish 'Moomin: the complete Tove Jasson comic strip' ". Drawn & Quarterly. 19 January 2006. Archived from the original on 27 June 2008 . Retrieved 4 February 2009. Reading this book in the light of the suffering of the Finnish people in 1939 as they were caught up in the turmoil of their Winter War casts a different glow over what is essentially a classic adventure story. There are displaced persons (Moominpapa), divided families (the Moomintrolls), marching groups of soulless strangers (the Hattifatteners), and rewards for kindness rendered (the Stork, whose glasses were returned to him by Moomintroll). Tove Jansson was already a respected artist when her first book was published in 1945. This can be seen in the way she illustrated the first Moomin adventure with a skilful mix of delicate sepia watercolour and delightful pen and line ink drawings. The realities of the war motivated Tove Jansson to create Moominvalley

Elle (2013-01-12). " "Moomin Valley", Akebono Children's Forest in Hanno City". Saitama with Kids. Archived from the original on 2016-04-13 . Retrieved 2016-04-13. As Moomin and his mother make their way through the dark forest, over bogs and towards the sea, they meet a small creature more frightened than themselves, a girl with blue hair who has been living in a tulip, a vindictive and violent ant-lion, and a friendly sea-troll who thinks he may be a relation. There are sea serpents, the wrong kind of sunshine, and the Hattifatteners, who are both deaf and dumb and – Moominmama proclaims, when they fail to understand how desperate she is to find her husband – stupid too. The Moomins also appeared in the form of comic strips. Their first appearance was in 1947 in the children's section of the Ny Tid newspaper, [14] and they were introduced internationally to English readers in 1954 in the popular London newspaper The Evening News. [15] [16] Tove Jansson drew and wrote all the strips until 1959. She shared the work load with her brother Lars Jansson until 1961; after that he took over the job until 1975 when the last strip was released. [17] Brown, Ulla (November 2004). "A Quest for What Lies Hidden" (PDF). Outwrite. 7: 8–12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-05-10 . Retrieved 2009-02-15.Where do I start with this book - well I realised as I was reading the re-isssued collectors editions that there was in fact a book before the series (at least "their" series) which was about the great flood. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.8618 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000583 Openlibrary_edition Where the book has weaknesses, they are in both characterisation and plot. Moomintroll and his mother are on a sometimes perilous quest, but their motive changes. They start off looking for somewhere to make a warm home to hibernate over winter, but along they way their journey turns into a search for Moominpapa who went off with the Hattenfatteners, another strange creature I'd previously encountered in other tales. He seems to have left their original home, behind the stove in a human home, for no really defined reason other than wanderlust. All of the books in the main series except The Moomins and the Great Flood (Originally: Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen) were translated and published in English during the 1960s and 70s. This first book would eventually be translated into English in 2005 by David McDuff and published by Schildts of Finland for the 60th anniversary of the series. A later 2012 version of the same translation, featuring Jansson's new preface to the 1991 Scandinavian printing, was published in Britain by Sort of Books, [12] and was more widely distributed. a b "Moomin Voices". Moomin Voices. Archived from the original on 2008-12-05 . Retrieved 2009-06-11.

The Jansson family has kept the rights of Moomins and controlled the Moomin Boom. The artistic control is now in the hands of Lars Jansson's daughter, Sophia Jansson-Zambra. Wanting to keep the control over Moomins, the family has turned down offers from the Walt Disney Company. [6] [60] [61] Akebono Children's Forest Park ( あけぼの子どもの森公園, Akebono Kodomo no Mori Kōen), also called "Moomin Valley", is a Moomin themed park for children in Hannō, Saitama in Japan that opened in July, 1997. [50] [51] Tove Jansson had already in the 1970s given her personal permission to the city of Hannō to build a small Moomin-themed playground there. [52] The Moomins have since been the basis for numerous television series, films and even two theme parks: one called Moomin World in Naantali, Finland, and another Akebono Children's Forest Park in Hannō, Saitama, Japan. Mûmin (1972) - IMDb". Uk.imdb.com. Archived from the original on 2012-10-24 . Retrieved 2016-04-13. Several stage productions have been made from Jansson's Moomin series, including a number that Jansson herself was involved in.Beautifully illustrated with Jansson's original full-colour watercolours, The Moomins and the Great Flood showcases Jansson as an artist more so than any of its sibling stories. It also had a greater fairytale feel, even opening with the words 'Once Upon a Time' and telling the story of a little Moomintroll and his mother looking through the woods for his lost father. Moominmamma feels incomplete without her spouse and the figure of the always self-centred Sniff does not yet seem quite like himself, referred to as 'the little creature'. Two feature films re-use the footage of the Polish-Austrian series: Moomin and Midsummer Madness had its release in 2008, and in 2010 the Moomins appear in the first Nordic 3-D film production, with the title song by Björk, in Moomins and the Comet Chase. The animated film titled Moomins on the Riviera is based on Moomin comic strip story Moomin on the Riviera and was first released on 10 October 2014 in Finland [19] and made its premiere on 11 October 2014 at BFI London Film Festival in United Kingdom. [20] In an October 2014 blog article at Screendaily, Sophia Jansson states that the film's "artistic team has made an effort to be true to the original drawings and the original text". [21] Screenshot from the 1969 television series of Moomintroll with a rifle. Jansson was known to have a very negative attitude towards the controversial content of the series. [22] [23] The Moomins, from the 1990 television series. From left to right, Sniff, Moominmamma, Moominpappa, Moomintroll (Moomin) and Little My. This book is not atrocious. It is simply a book devoid of curves, and you cannot have twists without a curve. The book is both an exercise in oversimplification and an exercise in the absurd. But when a story is both banal and nonsensical, a little sense begins to creep in it. Helsinki based pianist and composer Erna Tauro was commissioned to write the songs to lyrics by Jansson. The first collection consisted of six Moomin Songs ( Sex muminvisor): Moomintroll's Song ( Mumintrollets visa), Little My's Song ( Lilla Mys visa), Mrs. Fillyjonk's Song ( Fru Filifjonks sång), Theater Rat Emma's Words of Wisdom ( Teaterråttan Emmas visdomsord), Misabel's Lament ( Misans klagolåt) and Final Song ( Slutsång).