beautiful stories, not too sentimental, not too funny

.......

Klaartje
Lot12
Powerhouse
Olifant

Oh joy! It turns out there's a Moomin book I haven't read yet, and Plinius sends it to me to enjoy!
I'm enjoying it already!

Thank you, Plinius, I will take good care of it.

Lovely, delightful, poetic.
Thank you, Plinius! Enjoy, Lot12!

This picture is not from the book. It's an original drawing by Tove jansson for another book. Isn't it lovely?

Ha! Moomin valley is bij mij aangekomen! Had ik toch iets heeeeeeeeeel anders verwacht! Een soort prentenboek met wollige beestjes geschilderd in van die echter kinderboekkleuren. NIets van dat al, maar mooi, moooooiii... Ik heb al een prachtig verhaal gelezen: eenvoud en ontroering, herkenbaar en helder. Ver weg doet het denken aan Toon Tellegen. Hier ga ik van genieten.

It will be sad to part from this book. I love the pictures, I like the creatures very much and the stories are sweet. A lot of the stories deal with longing for something: a petdragon, silence, freedom, loneliness, disaster... The feelings connected to longing are very aptly described. One can recognise the sadness, fear, gloominess, despair, waiting and patience that come with longing. I liked that a lot. End of story is formed by an end to the longing, because the fullfilment of the longing isn't fullfilling, or because the person realises the longing can't be fullfilled. That got me a bit bored after a while. Perhaps I shouldn't have read them all in one sitting.

My favourite story is the story about the Moomins and the Christmass disaster. I like this sort of cultural confusions!

The Moomins will continue their travels on saturday. I will give them to Powerhouse then.

Thank you Lot for passing this one on and thank you Plinius for sharing.

Dear little stories, although it did get me as much as I hoped from what I heard about it. Maybe because I didn't know them as a child? Thank you for sharing, Plinius! On to Olifant.

Just read De hoed van de tovenaar by the same author, so will probably like this one too.

While riffling through the book, my eyes settled on this sentence: She (Tove Jansson) and her mother and brother are the only inhabitants on a little island in the Gulf of Finland, an hour's rowing from the next island.

Sometimes I wish I lived on an island like that.

update 20/9: though... after reading about the Hattifnatters and Moominpappa's quest I'm not sure what to think about (nearly) uninhabited islands... :-)

Enjoyed this book! Smiled while I read the stories and looked at the drawings.

Favourite drawing for now: Moominpappa + his hat in the water
Favourite story for now: ‘The Hemulen who loved Silence’. You can wait till things change or you can try and change things, how scary it may be.

Once upon a time there was a hemulen who worked in a pleasure-ground, which doesn’t necessarily mean having a lot of fun. The hemulen’s job was to punch holes in tickets, so that people wouldn’t have fun more than once, and such a job is quite enough to make anyone sad if you have to do it all your life.

Other work:
Pappa Moem en de mysteriën van de zee
The Summer Book

Thanks again Plinius for sharing.

the Tales came home again in a beautiful package, thanks Olifant!
And thank you all for sharing!