Moominworld

In a valley between the mountains and the sea stands a tall blue house, and in it live the Moomins: round, white, gentle trolls who take in whoever wanders up the path. Snufkin arrives with the spring and leaves with the autumn; Little My is tiny and afraid of nothing; the Snork Maiden worries about her fringe; the Groke freezes the ground she sits on and only wants to be near the lamp. Tove Jansson drew this world as much as she wrote it, and her Moominvalley is a place where a comet may be coming, a flood may carry off the house, and there will still be pancakes. The books run from The Moomins and the Great Flood, a slight 1945 prelude, through Comet in Moominland and the sunlit Finn Family Moomintroll to the later, stranger novels — Moominland Midwinter, where Moomintroll wakes alone in a season he has never seen; Moominpappa at Sea, on a lighthouse rock; and Moominvalley in November, in which the family never appears at all. Tales from Moominvalley gathers the short stories, The Invisible Child among them. The catalogue also carries the picture books and the tellings by other hands made for the animated series, which keep the names and lighten the weather. What deepens across the nine books is melancholy: the early adventures are for children, the last ones are about loneliness, weather and letting go, and adults tend to find those the best. Begin with Finn Family Moomintroll, the warmest door, then follow publication order; keep the Great Flood for last, as the origin it is — or first, if you must begin at the beginning.