Sometimes the encounters are threatening, like the ant-lion, at other times helpful, like the marabou stork who helps them look for Moominpappa.
The Moomins’ world is expanded by those whom they encounter during their quest. On the whole they are dwarfed by their environment, but they push forward intrepidly. The great forest is dark and mysterious in Jansson’s illustrations and the Great Serpent looms above them. Over and over, it is impressed upon the reader the vulnerability of the Moomins.
Moominmamma holds a tulip above her head in one scene. They are small enough to float upon a lily pad. Many Moomins, we are told, live behind stoves in human houses. One aspect of the Moomins I must have forgotten (and does not seem to have been made obvious in Moominpappa at Sea) is how small the Moomins are. As they emerge from the great forest, they encounter different creatures who are either a threat or a help to them along their way. They do not know where Moominpappa is but suspect he has gone off with the Hattifatteners. Moominmamma and Moomintroll are searching for a place to live before the onset of winter. The book includes some of Jansson’s earliest artwork for the series, beautifully reproduced in sepia and black and white drawings throughout the Sort of Books edition. It also features a character identified only as a little creature that looks very much like Sniff from later books, as well as the Hattifatteners, strange worm-like creatures that seem to emerge in multitudes from the ground and do not speak, and the Hemulen. It introduces the characters Moominmamma and Moomintroll, primarily, since Moominpappa is missing for much of the story. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating window into the world of the Moomins for fans of the books. The Moomins and the Great Flood is not as developed as the novels that were to follow. 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.
The Moomins and the Great Flood, however, was mostly out of print until 1991 when it was reprinted in Scandinavia. 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. It was to be followed by another eight novels and short story collections as well as three illustrated picture books. The Moomins and the Great Flood was the first Moomins book Tove Jansson published in 1945.
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