Book Reviews: The Moomins by Tove Jansson, comics 1-3, books 6-9

[juushika]

Title: Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Volume 1
Author: Tove Jansson
Published: Drawn and Quarterly, 2006 (1954-1955)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 95
Total Page Count: 319,185
Text Number: 1114
Read Because: reading the series, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This feels significantly different from the novels. The panel format paces the narrative into a string of small adventures—the tone is smaller, with less (sometimes physical) space for the awesome and atmospheric; the characters come across as more-than-usually foolish and slow to grow, in part because there's no continuity with the book series so some aspects are literally rehashed. Yet the the comic format is itself a joy. The art is charming and beautifully detailed, with clever touches like creative panel frames; the characters almost feel more real for being illustrated—present and emotive in a way that almost balances aforementioned issues with characterization. I just wish I liked the stories more!


Title: Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Volume 2
Author: Tove Jansson
Published: Drawn and Quarterly, 2007 (1955-1956)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 85
Total Page Count: 319,270
Text Number: 1115
Read Because: reading the series, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: At this point it seems fair to say that I just don't enjoy the comics as much as the books. My initial impressions remain: the art is charming, emotive, with phenomenal background detail. But the characters are slighter, more frivolous. They're inconsistent not just with the tone/character development in the books, but even between individual comic arcs. But this collection has Little My, particularly the version of her character that I'd heard of via the fandom and expected to love, and indeed I do; she's mean but not cruel, incisive, selfish, and so much fun—a sharp counterpoint to the usual Moomin-mindness.


Title: Moominland Midwinter (The Moomins Book 6)
Author: Tove Jansson
Translator: Thomas Warburton
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014 (1957)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 321,285
Text Number: 1127
Read Because: reading the series, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Moomintroll wakes unseasonably early while the rest of his family hibernates through winter. As always, but especially so with these seasonal and particularly evocative books, I love the atmospheric parts of this—the lonely, cozy winter and the pleasurable anxiety of temporary scarcity is beautifully rendered, and I adore the hidden beasts:

Too-Ticky rubbed her nose and thought. "Well, it's like this," she said. "There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that's a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds odd night animals and people that don't fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all year. and then when everything's quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear."

Moomintroll's PoV is closer and more inward-focused than usual for this series, and the smaller touches of humor, like the unwelcome houseguests, are a productive contrast without being overwhelming. But my sense of humor was surgically removed at birth, and so I bounce off the more mundane and humorous elements, particularly the sporty Hemulen which recycles the plot of the winter arc in the comics and echoes the absurdist social critique of the theater plot in Moominsummer Madness. And each time, that disconnect breaks my heart because I want to love the book that little bit more.


Title: Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Volume 3
Author: Tove Jansson
Published: Drawn and Quarterly, 2008 (1956-1957)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 105
Total Page Count: 327,200
Text Number: 1156
Read Because: reading the series, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This annoyed me less than previous volumes, which may in large part be because I took a break in reading the series, but is also because the shorter narrative arcs leave less room for absurdity. But neither did I enjoy it more than the rest of the comics. It has the same strengths (art, approachability) and same limitations (not as evocative or emotionally robust as the novels), and leaves me as apathetic. I think that means it's time to give up on the comics.

And reader, I did then give up on the comics.


Title: Tales from Moominvalley (The Moomins Book 7)
Author: Tove Jansson
Translator: Thomas Warburton
Published: Square Fish, 2010 (1962)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 190
Total Page Count: 333,915
Text Number: 1212
Read Because: reading the series, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Nine stories. Short fiction provides an opportunity to view lesser-seen aspects of characters (Snufkin's hidden depths are always a delight, particularly the view into his relationship with Moomintroll in "The Spring Tune") and build one-off arcs and characters. Most stories have distinct lessons, but the moralizing is lampshaded (as in "Cedric") and has new and mollifying tone: a cynicism that caveats the hopeful endings but also makes them more valuable. The Moomin cast are frequently at odds with social expectation, they're awkward or yearning; but this sense of discontent is different and feels more mature. It makes for stories like "The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters," raw and cathartic and bitter and joyful, which I loved. And while short fiction collections always vary in quality, the bits of tone that don't work for me are contained to a single story rather than compromising an otherwise-strong work, which is an issue I've had in the novels. This is probably my favorite of the Moomin books thus far, which I wouldn't've expected of a short story collection, but I guess it's no surprise that I prefer my whimsy with a side of bitterness/sadness.


Title: Moominpapa at Sea (The Moomins Book 8)
Author: Tove Jansson
Translator: Kingsely Hart
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010 (1965)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 313,210
Text Number: 1073
Read Because: reading the series, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This is such an strange Moomin book. I loved the reflective and melancholy touches in Tales from Moominvalley, but here those elements are overwhelming. The Moomins move to an island lighthouse, and the atmosphere gives over entirely to the desolate setting and ravaged natural beauty; the character arcs are separated and lonely, and progress at a snail's pace towards resolutions that offer some payoff but don't guarantee a return to the way things were. Constrained to short fiction, the sadness is beautiful; in the longest of the novels, largely bereft of whimsy, it's not fun to read. But I suspect I'd've enjoyed this more if I weren't hydrophobic & so could appreciate the seaside aesthetic, because I admire the commitment and appreciate how this contrasts and enriches the rest of the series; it is in many ways the more thoughtful, less farcical Moomin book that I wanted.


Title: Moominvalley in November (The Moomins Book 9)
Author: Tove Jansson
Translator: Kingsley Hart
Published: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003 (1970)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 180
Total Page Count: 315,305
Text Number: 1088
Read Because: reading the series, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: The last two books in this series are functionally a duo. The friends who were notably absent in Moominpappa at Sea now come to visit the abandoned Moomin home. This book is more satisfying, both because it benefits from its relation to the previous book and because it has a better balanced tone: the plot moves faster, the book is shorter, and so the subdued and melancholy atmosphere is balanced against the character arcs; it feels like the fantastic short story collection. But it's also a weird place to end the series, and I wish the last two books could have somehow been combined into a single volume or arc.

Insofar as a review of the final book is a review of the series entire: The Moomin series was never quite what I wanted it to be. Often too silly, sometimes weirdly sad, there was always something in the way of my ability to fully enjoy the quirky, bumbling cast and the evocative/fantastic elements. I think that could have been remedied had I encountered the series as a child, when I would have been more receptive to the humor and more likely to latch on to the magic. But even if my adult reading experience was flawed, the cumulative effect is memorable, often because of things I've seen as flaws. The shifting tone, the kitchen sink approach to plot structure, all are distinctive; it's playful and childlike and kind, but has an adult's insight that I imagine ages remarkably well. I can see why these are beloved of so many, and wish I'd been a better audience, but it was still time well spent.

Comments

[oracne]

"Midwinter" and "In November" are my absolute favorites.

[starshipfox]

I'm glad you found reading these a positive experience, even if they didn't always work for you. The more I read your reviews, the more I realised how strange the Moomin books. I want to reread some of them now -- it's been a while!

The comics, on the other hand, have never gripped me at all.

[juushika]

This comment has made me wonder what other children's lit is particularly strange in retrospect or from the view of someone that didn't read them until adulthood. The Christian allegory in the Narnia series seems the obvious example, but for some reason it never surprised or bothered me. I think I was practicing death of the author even as a kid, realizing that obviously there was a statement being made but also that I cared about the speculative elements way more than the metaphors, so realizing what those metaphors were didn't matter much.

The other answer is probably that strangeness is everywhere in books for kids--I certainly noticed a ton of it when reading picture books. It seems like one of those things we expect children to roll with, where we might expect older audiences to require more coherence or explanation. And given the places I stumbled with the Moomin series, I suppose that's fair! Although for me it was mostly an issue of inconsistent tone, rather than oddball content--insofar as the two can be divorced.

[starshipfox]

My wife grew up speaking Polish and hadn't encountered many of the children's books I grew up with, and I can definitely attest that she's found some of the classic children's novels I shared with her very strange -- she couldn't get her head around Alice in Wonderland at all, and I realise it barely holds together as a story when you read it as an adult -- but I remembered it so fondly from childhood. I'm always surprised when people say they noticed the Christian allegory in the Narnia books as children -- I was brought up as an atheist, but I went to a Catholic school, and I still managed not to notice Christianity at all in the Narnia books until Lucy references Christ directly at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I still think it's a fairly subtle metaphor, but a lot of other people say they felt like they've been hit over the head with it, so maybe I'm just slow on the uptake.

In general, my wife has consistently preferred realistic children's stories over fantasy ones, even though she's a big fan of adult fantasy. I think children's fantasy (or some of it) doesn't try as hard to make sense of its fantasy worlds, and that may be a stumbling block when we encounter it as adults.

[juushika]

Wonderland is of course the actual most obvious answer and I can't believe it slipped my mind, other than 1) everything does, let's be honest and 2) the Wonderland books are something I didn't really discover (outside of popular culture/Disney) until young adulthood, and I grew up alongside them into adulthood, particularly as a productive internal narrative for being crazy, so I don't have the cognitive dissonance of rediscovering them as an adult or in a different context.

But your wife's view is fascinating and confirms what I expected. This also makes me think about the differences between MG and YA, which I think we've talked about before--particularly the way the genres treat magic, both in the sense of magic systems/fantasy worlds, and in the tone of each genre. I feel like there's a sort of spectrum where like...

kidlit = intuitive/illogical magic systems that align with character arcs (and maybe reader experiences?); evocative but in a bonkers way

MG = more logical plots and magic systems, but there's magic in character arcs (discovering how to operate within the magic system often is the character arc?) and in tone--conveys an atmosphere of wonder

YA = equally or even more logical magic systems, but character arcs are more complex and generally involve interpersonal/relationship elements, so magic isn't innately tied to character arc, therefore not innately present in atmosphere/reader experience

making huge generalizations that point to my personal biases, obviously. I like the intuitive elements of kidlit, but I do think the illogical elements can be harder to engage with as an adult; I also think the boundary between intuitive and illogical is super personal.

[starshipfox]

kidlit = intuitive/illogical magic systems that align with character arcs (and maybe reader experiences?); evocative but in a bonkers way

I agree with this assessment of kidlit, but I also think this an excellent description of myth, and the ways in which myth is used to help people understand the unknowable, or to make sense of traumatic or emotionally experiences. Which I find interesting: obviously kidlit and fairytales have a very close relationship, and fairytales grow out of myth. Kid logic is intuitive, emotional, animal, in a way that adult logic is not, and the things that are both good and bad about myth and fairytale are also true of kidlit. Kidlit accesses an older, more emotional, but not less sophisticated way of thinking. I also find that the ways in which I struggle as an adult to engage with kidlit are exactly the same ways in which I struggle to engage with myth as story rather than framework.

Alice in Wonderland brings together a lot of the elements of intuition and subconcious-made-real that I particularly love, and I was startled to realise that it didn't make immediate sense to everyone. It's interesting that it continues to work so well for us though, given how much of it is direct satire of Victorian childhood, that we have no experience with. But so much of it really works intuitively.

[juushika]

!! This is so smart and also I think very much on the mark, and very much speaks to how I read kidlit. Aside from the obvious point that baby's first/instructional-style don't age well, I'm also not drawn towards realist kidlit (despite that I love the improvements happening in representation there). I'm looking rather for that sort of intuitive logic, so I look towards what counts, in kidlit, a "fantasy". Personally I find it more approachable than myth--similar effect, but contained length and art make for an easier, lower effort buy-in. But it's fascinating to see such similar structures/effects in such radically different (or, at least, different to modern perception) media/formats.