Moomin Book One by Tove Jansson

Moomin Book One by Tove Jansson

The enchanting comic strip that introduced adult readers to the wonderful world of Moomin

Tove Jansson is revered around the world as one of the foremost children's authors of the twentieth century for her illustrated chapter books regarding the magical worlds of her creation, the Moomins. The Moomins saw life in many forms but debuted to its biggest audience ever on the pages of the world's largest newspaper, the London Evening News, in 1954. The strip was syndicated in newspapers around the world with millions of readers in forty countries. Moomin Book One is the first volume of Drawn & Quarterly's publishing plan to reprint the entire strip drawn by Jansson before she handed over the reins to her brother Lars in 1960. This is the first time the strip will be published in any form in North America and will deservedly place Jansson among the international cartooning greats of the last century.

The Moomins are a tight-knit family-hippo-shaped creatures with easygoing and adventurous outlooks. Jansson's art is pared down and precise, yet able to compose beautiful portraits of ambling creatures in fields of flowers or on rock-strewn beaches that recall Jansson's Nordic roots. The comic strip reached out to adults with its gentle and droll sense of humor. Whimsical but with biting undertones, Jansson's observations of everyday life, including guests who overstay their welcome, modern art, movie stars, and high society, easily caught the attention of an international audience and still resonate today.

Finnish writer, artist, and political cartoonist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is best known for her books about the Moomins, adventurous, amusing cartoon trolls who had much in common with their bohemian, nature-loving author and, it seems, shared many of her family's traits. She is also the author of eleven novels and short-story collections for adults, including The Summer Book and The True Deceiver.

Boel Westin is professor of literature at Stockholm University and author of the biography Tove Jansson: Life, Words, Art. She is chairman of jury for the world's largest children's literature prize, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Helen Svensson was a literary manager at Schildts Forlag Publishers for thirty years where she was Jansson's last editor.

Sarah Death is a prizewinning literary translator, mainly from Swedish, with some forty translated titles to her name.