🦋 Thoughts about Moomins
So as of today I have read all the Moominfamily books except maybe three of them which are out of print for a long time and hard to locate. I love them. Picking up Finn Family Moomintroll back in July was one of the best things I've done in a long time. These are the books in (as near as I can determine) order by original publication date: - Comet in Moominland (1946)
- Finn Family Moomintroll (1948)
- Moominsummer Madness (1954)
- Moominland Midwinter (1957)
- Tales from Moominvalley (1963)
- Moominpappa at Sea (1963)
- Moominpappa's Memoirs (1968)
- Moominvalley in November (1971?)
The two starting points I would recommend to people are Finn Family Moomintroll, and Moominvalley in November -- I think either one will suck you right in and that it will be impossible not to want to read the entire series. Finn Family Moomintroll is really good for reading aloud to a very young child, the others not so much. The only two that do not stand up so well are Comet in Moominland and Moominpappa's Memoirs -- you will want to read them just to fill in some details of the Moomin world, but they will not demand to be reread. The first five books and Moominpappa's Memoirs are quite suitable for any child old enough to read them; the other three demand a little more sophistication and I would not give them to a child younger than about 9, at least not unless I were reading the book with the child and helping her understand some of the nuance. I have described the style of the later books as "a cross between A. A. Milne and Beckett."
posted evening of Friday, October 15th, 2004
➳ More posts about Moomins
➳ More posts about Children's Books
➳ More posts about Tove Jansson
➳ More posts about Readings
| 
