After a couple of lean years, 2016 is shaping up to be a great reading year. If things continue at their current pace, I will have read more books in the first four months of the year than I did in all of 2015, and while there's a bit of cheating involved in that--my numbers this year have been padded by a lot of quick reads, such as comics or standalone novellas--it's also good to be back in
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Blog: Asking the Wrong Questions (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Blog: PowellsBooks.BLOG (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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As a child who loved books I was fascinated by the illustrations just as much as the text. The same is true for me today, and I'm happy to be among a group of writers who also illustrate their own works. There's a rich tradition of writer-illustrators spanning time. All 10 of these books are [...]
Blog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Blog: PW -The Beat (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Although most of these books have been announced, here’s all of Drawn & Quarterly’s fall schedule in all it’s glory. You can read the complete catalog here — commentary below is my own.
STEP ASIDE, POPS: A HARK! A VAGRANT COLLECTION
Kate Beaton
9781770462083 6c2d3
In stores September 15, 2015! $19.95 / 5.5″ x 8.75″ / 160 pages / b+w / hardcover / 9781770462083
Surely one of the biggest books of the fall —collecting Beaton’s strips over the last four years—a hilarious mosaic o Canadian history, strong female protagonists and people who take themselves a leeeeeetle too seriously—perfect for gifting!
KILLING AND DYING
Adrian Tomine
9781770462090 fbf67-1
In stores October 6, 2015! $22.95 / 6.25″ x 9.25″ / 128 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770462090
Collecting the last few OPtic Nerve’s — Tomine’s cartooning has never been more insightful.
SHIGERU MIZUKI’S HITLER
Shigeru Mizuki, translated by Zack Davisson
In stores November 2015! $24.95 / 6.5″ x 8.75″ / 296 pages / b+w / paperback / 9781770462106
HIstorian/cartoonist Mizuki is known for SHOWA! his history of wartime and post-war Japan. I’m not familiar with this work but this should be “compelling” to coin a phrase.
PUKE FORCE
Brian Chippendale
In stores October 2015! $22.95 / 10.875″ x 8.025″ / 120 pages / b+w / hardcover / 9781770462199
D&Q’s first book by Fort Thunder ally Chippendale—these strips were originally serialized on the PictureBox website, I believe. Here’s the catalog blurb:
A bomb explodes in a coffee shop: the incident is played out over and over again from the perspective of each table in the shop, revisiting moments from ten and twenty years before. We see the inevitable as the characters bicker or celebrate, unaware of what awaits them. Throughout this dystopic graphic novel, Chippendale uses humor and a frantic drawing style to show how the insidious nature of corporate greed and the commodification of everything have warped society into a killing machine. Sardonic and self-aware, Puke Force asks all the right questions, providing a startling and on-point take on contemporary social issues. Chippendale’s artwork makes each panel a masterpiece of thrumming linework and lo-fi magic, as his storytelling wends and winds its way to a fascinating conclusion.
RED COLORED ELEGY
Seiichi Hayashi, translated by Taro Nettleton
9781770462120 3ac17-1
In stores August 2015! $19.95 / 6.875″ x 8.25″ / 240 pages / b+w / paperback / 9781770462120
New paperback edition of a manga that reads like the best literary fiction.
THE NATIVE TREES OF CANADA: A POSTCARD SET
Leanne Shapton
9781770462137 bff04
In stores August 2015! $14.95 / 4″ x 5.75″ / 30 postcards / full color / 9781770462137
Postcard set for the horticulturally minded.
PIPPI LONGSTOCKING: THE STRONGEST IN THE WORLD!
Astrid Lindgren & Ingrid Vang Nyman
translated by Tiina Nunnally
In stores October 2015! $22.95 / 7.5″ x 9.5″ / 160 pages / full color / paperback / 9781770462151
Is there a better role model for anyone than Pippi?
THE OWNER’S MANUAL TO TERRIBLE PARENTING
Guy Delisle, translated by Helge Dascher
TERRIBLE.cover
In stores August 2015! $12.95 / 5″ x 7″ / 204 pages / b+w / paperback / 9781770462144
The third book in Delisle’s witty series of short cartoons on crappy parenting.
MOOMINMAMMA’S MAID
Tove Jansson
In stores November 2015! $9.95 / 8.5″ x 6″ / 64 pages / full color / flexicover / 9781770462168
This small, back-pack sized Moomin reprint books are perfect for the kids in your life.
Blog: PW -The Beat (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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D&Q has just firmed up their Winter/Spring titles for 2015 and…well, it’s going tobe another great year, in case all these previews we’ve been publishing haven’t given you that idea yet. As if new books from Jillian Tamaki, Michael Deforge, Anders Nilsen, Seth, Shizero Mizuki and the like weren’t enough to get you drooling into a bucket, there are a few new faces, such as MELODY by Svlvie Rancourt, a lost 80s comic about a woman’s life in rural Canada, and a new book by stunning Norwegian illustrator Bendik Kaltenborn. More Moomin! More Anna and Froga! And yet More Clyde Fans from Seth! Say what you will, but I love by once every two years look into the lives of Abe and Simon Matchcard and their doomed fan company.
PLUS….as 25th Anniversary spectacular with variant covers by Paco Medina and Alex Ross including tributes from writers including Margaret Atwood (writing on Kate Beaton), Sheila Heti (writing on Moomin), Jonathan Lethem (writing on Chester Brown), Françoise Mouly (writing on Adrian Tomine). The immense tome will also spotlight the history of the company with interviews, photos and many a little of the sassy D&Q style we all love from their website. AND hundreds of pages of previously unpublished/untranslated comics by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Michael DeForge, Joe Matt, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Guy Delisle, Julie Doucet, Art Spiegelman, Adrian Tomine, Rutu Modan, Shigeru Mizuki, and again, many more. Gotta sit down! Too much awesome!
AND there’s the regular line, whose covers and biblio info we share below, but to get more info just go here.
WINTER 2015
FIRST YEAR HEALTHY
BY MICHAEL DEFORGE
In stores January 13 2015! $14.95 / 6″ x 9″ / 48 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770461734
PALOOKAVILLE 22 BY SETH
In stores April 14 2015! $22.95 / 6.25″ x 8.5″ / 120 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770461635
TRASH MARKET BY TADAO TSUGE
edited and translated by Ryan Holmberg
In stores March 2015! $22.95 / 6.375″ x 8.75″ / 272 pages / b+w / flexicover / 9781770461741
ADULT CONTEMPORARY BY BENDIK KALTENBORN
In stores June 23 2015! $24.95 / 10.575″ x 8.25″ / 176 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770461758
JERUSALEM: CHRONICLES FROM THE HOLY CITY BY GUY DELISLE; translated by Helge Dascher
Now in paperback, expanded with sketches from Delisle’s time in Jerusalem!
In stores March 3 2015! $19.95 / 6.5″ x 8.75″ / 344 pages / full-color / paperback / 9781770461765
INTELLIGENT SENTIENT? BY LUKE RAMSEY
In stores February 3 2015! $19.95 / 10.875″ x 8″ / 64 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770461772
WALT & SKEEZIX BOOK SIX: 1931-1932
BY FRANK KING
edited by Chris Ware, foreword by Jeet Heer
In stores April 7 2015! $39.95 / 9.5″ x 7.5″ / 400 pages / b+w / hardcover / 9781770461789
SPRING 2015
SUPERMUTANT MAGIC ACADEMY
BY JILLIAN TAMAKI
In stores April 28, 2015! $19.95 / 6.25″ x 8.5″ / 224 pages / b+w and partial color / paperback / 9781770461987
MÉLODY BY SYLVIE RANCOURT
trans. Helge Dascher
In stores June 9 2015! $22.95 / 6″ x 7.75″ / 352 pages / b+w / paperback / 9781770462007
DRAWN AND QUARTERLY:
25 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY CARTOONING, COMICS, AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
In stores May 12, 2015! $44.95 / 6.875″ x 9.125″ / 512 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770461994
SHOWA 1953-1989: A HISTORY OF JAPAN
BY SHIGERU MIZUKI
trans. Zack Davisson
In stores July 2015! $24.95 / 6.45″ x 8.75″ / 552 pages / b+w / paperback / 9781770462014
STROPPY BY MARC BELL
In stores May 2015! $21.95 / 8.125″ x 10.375″ / 64 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770462052
POETRY IS USELESS
BY ANDERS NILSEN
In stores June 2015! $34.95 / 6.5″ x 8.75″ / 224 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770462076
MOOMIN BOOK TEN: THE COMPLETE LARS JANSSON COMIC STRIP
BY LARS JANSSON
In stores June 2015! $19.95 / 8.75″ x 12″ / 112 pages / b+w / hardcover / 9781770462021
ANNA AND FROGA: FORE!
BY ANOUK RICARD
trans. Helge Dascher
In stores July 2015! $14.95 / 8″ x 9.75″ / 40 pages / full color / hardcover / 9781770462045
MOOMIN AND THE MARTIANS
BY TOVE JANSSON
In stores July 2015! $9.95 / 8.5″ x 6″ / 56 pages / full color / flexicolor / 9781770462038
PLUS check out the current 50% off sales running until the end of the week!
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Just over a month ago, it was the centenary of Tove Jansson's birth. There were public celebrations in her home land of Finland, and an exhibition at the Finnish National Gallery dedicated to the paintings, illustrations, and writing of this extraordinary figure.
I believe this exhibition also included the original miniature Moomin house on loan from its home at the Moomin Museum Tampere. This is a blue, five storey building which Jansson built with her partner Tuulikki Pietilä in the 1970's. It's about three metres high,
Moomin House, Tampere (Adele Pennington) |
I haven't been to see it, but my cousin and fellow Moomin-fan Ann - who lives in Norway - has. She describes how "Tove and Tuulikki built the house using materials they found washed up on the beach. The roof tiles, by the way, were made from cedar bark they found and cut into shape using nail scissors. Fish-scale pattern. And Moominpappa stands in his room which is equipped with maritime clutter, looking out of his window through his telescope. The small shy people are in tiny rooms in the basement."
But Tove didn't build this wonderful house to put in a museum. She didn't build it to market her books, or as a wonderful photo opportunity for social media. This house is a labour of love, a work of art, an act of pure creation by someone who felt compelled to write, draw and make from an early age, and for whom imagined universes arrived so fully realised in her head, they could literally be translated into bricks and mortar.
That house, along with so much else - like the sculptures and montages of scenes from the books they made together and put in glass cases - is for me a beautiful representation of why in some ways, Tove Jansson was the ultimate children's writer.
She wasn't just a children's writer, of course, not by a long stretch - but she was one of the greatest artists to write children's books.
In a famous 1961 essay, “The Deceitful Writer of Children’s Books”, Jansson writes that she writes for children not because she is particularly interested in them, or because she wants to entertain or educate them, but much more because she needs to satisfy "the childishness in herself".
This is not emotional immaturity or arrested development, of course - but rather a profound connection as an adult with the intuitive world of childish make believe and play, and a sad awareness at its passing.
Born into a somewhat madcap household of artists, from an early age Jansson was drawing, writing and making, at a dizzyingly prolific rate. It was like a compulsion, and I think any writer would - at certain times - envy that inexhaustible drive to produce and create. She developed her craft in all disciplines over many years, but in the 1970's, was able to sit down and build a toy house for her Moomins just as she might have done as a child at the beginning of the century.
Moominland is the world through the eyes of a child, captured with the skill of an adult, a synthesis of pure-make believe and acute, uninhibited natural observation, a perfect marriage of pictures and words. And it is a world of mystery tinged with an ineluctable sadness.
"It was the end of August — the time when owls hoot at night and flurries of bats swoop noiselessly over the garden. Moomin Wood was full of glow-worms, and the sea was disturbed. There was expectation and a certain sadness in the air, and the harvest moon came up huge and yellow. Moomintroll had always liked those last weeks of summer most, but he didn’t really know why.” (Finn Family Moomintroll)
The Moomins are popular worldwide, very accessible stories with pictures for readers young and old, with a warm and human cast of family characters, but the Moominvalley with its Hattifatteners and the Groke is also a strange, and occasionally frightening place - just like growing up. The mysteries of the wild country beyond are never far away:
“The very last house stood all by itself under a dark green wall of fir-trees, and here the wild country really began. Snufkin walked faster and faster straight into the forest. Then the door of the last house opened a chink and a very old voice cried: ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I don’t know,’ Snufkin replied.
The door shut again and Snufkin entered his forest, with a hundred miles of silence ahead of him.”
The genius of Jansson is her ability to take children so simply and so naturally on exciting night journeys down mysterious paths, never to deny the human impulse to grow and to wander - even if gallons of milk, berries and buns will always be waiting in a warm Moominhouse on your return.
The elegant drawings and poetic prose of the Moomins tread the finest of paths between an enticing retreat of warmth, family eccentricity and humour - that we know cannot endure forever - and the mysterious unknowable forest beyond. It's a path every child must take one day, and who better to guide you down that road than a Moomin? Which other cast of creatures so gracefully demonstrate the wonder, mystery and sadness of growing up?
If it is childish to memorialise childhood with such imagination and feeling, whether through a miniature blue house or the pages of a book, then let's always try and write for the childishness in ourselves.
Blog: The Children's Book Review (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Carson Ellis is an award-winning illustrator who has provided art for bestsellers such as "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart, The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket, and the "Wildwood Chronicles" by her husband, Colin Meloy.
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Greetings! If you live, work, or are vacationing this summer in the San Diego area, consider creating stories with pictures at my class, on the beautiful campus of UCSD in La Jolla!
Illustrating Books for Children Instructor: Joy Chu June 26-August 21Wednesday evenings, 6:30pm-9:30pm
extension.ucsd.edu Register before June 25! _________________________
Inspiration is Everywhere!
During last winter’s 2013 class at UCSD Extension, I asked my students to locate the CIP book summary from any picture book, and use it as the inspiration for an eight-panel wordless picture story.
CIP (“pronounced “sip”) is book publishing jargon for the Library of Congress Publishing Cataloging-in-Publication Data. This is found within the copyright page text of every book. It features a well-constructed one-phrase synopsis of the book’s theme.
Here is an example. One student, Aijung Kim, selected the following CIP summary from Chalk by Bill Thompson. While she didn’t read the book, she knew from its cover that it featured a dinosaur. . .
“Book Summary: A wordless picture book about three children who go to a park on a rainy day, find some chalk, and draw pictures that come to life.”
Here’s what she came up with:
Another student, Fnu Anisi, enchanted by Kevin Henkes‘ Kitten’s First Full Moon, wanted to explore an eight page wordless re-telling.
Book summary: When Kitten mistakes the full moon for a bowl of milk, she ends up tired, wet, and hungry trying to reach it.
Here are Anisi’s results:
At my upcoming summer 2013 UCSD Extension class (June 26-August 21), Illustrating Books for Children (ART 40011) we might look into creating an advent-styled calendar as a possible inspiration for creating a picture story.
Example: Look at the one Zachariah OHora created from his own story. Fun, yes?
Creating a 3D model for your story setting can also serve as an invaluable reference in plotting out your narrative, as well as a guide in drawing scenes from a variety of perspectives. Note how illustrator Sophie Blackall created a diorama for her work-in-progress. She can view her characters from above!
Author/illustrator Barbara McClintock builds cut-paper replicas of her illustrations, in composing her scenes. The following sequence is from her studies for an upcoming book, Adèle and Simon in China (all 3 photos below © Barbara McClintock)
Here’s Tove Jansson, creating reference models for her fabulous Moomin stories.
____________________ Illustrating Books for Children / Art 40011 June 26-August 21Wednesdays, 6:30pm-9:30pm
extension.ucsd.edu
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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On the real island |
Tove and a Moomin |
Blog: MacKids Home (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Moomins! They are adorable! They are from Finland! They are....
(what ARE they?)
Tove Jansson's creations are now available in Board Book form:
Moomins Little Book of Words and Little Book of Numbers are the perfect treat this Spring!
So if these aren't the most fun way to introduce your little one to literacy and numeracy, I give up.
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Frank Cottrell Boyce came rushing up the steps to the altar of St James the Last church like a choir boy late for a service… his boyish charm and enthusiasm infectious. He reminded us at the CWIG Conference this past Saturday that the business we writers are in, is the business of enchantment. And that real creativity should feel like a game, not a career.
So I’m reading through my weekly edition of AL Direct and I notice that no matter what worldwide occurrence takes place, librarians are always there. Whether it’s damage to two libraries in Egypt, stories from the librarians in Christchurch, New Zealand, or how the Wisconsin Library Association delayed Library Legislative Day due to the protests, the profession is there. That last story was of particular interest to me, since I had wondered whether any school librarians were amongst the protesters in Wisconsin lately. According to the article, they most certainly are. You go, guys!! Seriously, I want to hear more about it. If any of you know any school librarians marching in WI, send them my way. I’d love to do a full post on them.
If you love Tove Jansson’s Moomins then there are some wonderful gifts out there for you… A Moomin Love bowl, plate and mug set from the UK store Cooks Paraphernalia, who stock a wide range of Moomin crockery. Moomin 4-Piece Cutlery Set available at a UK store which specialises in Scandinavian goods, Cloudberry Living. Moomin overnight bags from Pussy Home Boutique – they also have Moonin keyrings, jars, pencils and other goodies! Moomin duvet cover and pillow set from Artbox, who also sell many other Moomin gifts Are you a Moomin fan?
On Saturday, August 7th at 2:00 p.m. I will be moderating a talk with Stephen Roxburgh of namelos and Jennifer Perry, the Assistant Vice President & Editorial Director of the Book Publishing Group at Sesame Workshop, about ebooks, digital literature, and the current children’s literary industry. As preparation, this article from Publishers Weekly called The Digital Revolution in Children’s Publishing could not be better timed. I was particularly taken with this quote from Kristen McLean (executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children) regarding interactive content: “Early reports indicate that this content is not replacing traditional books. It’s replacing games . . . Parents would rather see their kids engaged in book content than in game content.” For my part, I hope that in the future more authors will be directly involved in the interactive aspects of some of these books. Or that we get more designers that study exactly what works and doesn’t work with our kids from a storytelling standpoint. Whatever the case, I’m inclined to suggest to attendees of my panel discussion that they read this article before attending. It’s sure to answer a lot of questions, and raise even more.
Being a big fan of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, I had no idea she had illustrated a version of The Hobbit as well as two books by Lewis Carroll, until I recently discovered this site. There isn’t much information and the scans are a bit small, still it’s amazing to see such rarely seen work (at least to me) by one of the world’s greatest children’s book illustrators. Posted by Stephan Britt on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Take a look at this evocative article written by Sally for Canada’s The Globe and Mail. She brings alive the joy of summer-reading and discusses Moomin-creator Tove Jansson’s modern classic, The Summer Book. Sally also poses the question, “What are you reading this summer?” - has this been a time for reducing those piles of must-read books in your household? And if, instead, you are emerging from winter-time, has there been some opportunity to escape into a good book? In our family, Little Brother has been as voracious a reader as ever; and it has been a relief to find Older Brother with his nose in a book at every opportunity too. Discovering Anthony Horowitz’ Alex Rider series, as well as various graphic/cartoon books has definitely helped here…
Part II: Engage!
AT THE NEW VICTORY THEATER
Tove Jansson's The Summer Book is not really a children's book, nor really a novel, it is a biographical novelisation of the summer months that Tove Jansson's mother spent on an island in the Gulf of Finland with Tove's niece Sophia. This is a story about a young girl and an old woman and how they learn to live with each other, and the isolation of a tiny island home. It's also a moving exploration of how to deal with the approach of death. Grandmother and granddaughter discuss whether there are ants in Heaven, bravery and the joys of sleeping out in a tent; they draw awful pictures, build a miniature Venice in the marsh, creature animal sculptures, deal with a tremendous storm (which Sophia believes she caused by praying for something exciting to happen), and explore a newly built house that blocks their horizon. This is a gentle, charming and beguiling book that is beautifully written and translated.
Blog: A Fuse #8 Production
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Blog: PaperTigers
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I didn't necessarily read all the escapist books first and all the inspiring/engaging books after that (and certainly most of the books I read over the 12 Days of Christmas had elements of both). But as I enjoyed the comforts of fantasy and adventure, I also found myself getting a bit fired up about interesting ideas. Since I had been a little worried that end-of-the-year letdown and disappointments would leave me lethargic and apathetic, I was willing enough to let these next books work their magic.
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Berlin, City of Stones
and
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Berlin: City of Smoke
by Jason Lutes
Jason Lutes' Berlin series is one of those graphic novels that the ALP has been telling me I should read for ages, while I was more interested in the flashy superhero stuff (Green Arrow, for example). During the cold, quiet days of the year's end, I finally felt inclined to pick up the first volume, and within pages was immersed in a vision of 1929 Berlin, rich with early 20th century details but eerily recognizable: the economy is very bad, violent political factions each proclaim themselves the true voice of the people, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is impossibly wide, and nightlife, the arts, journalism, and relationships can seem to offer either perspective or an escape. Lutes' story is complexly structured and peopled with dozens of well-drawn (literally and metaphorically) characters; I felt I wanted to read everything slowly and repeatedly to grasp the shape and the details of the world he created, but at the same time I had to read quickly to know what happened next -- the pleasant agony of the best books.
But perhaps the most lasting effect the books have had is an ongoing conversation, first with the ALP and spreading to others, about the responsibilities of artists to engage with politics. One of the main characters is an artist, concerned mainly with art for art's sake and drawn into the decadent nightlife of Weimer urbanity; another, a journalist, is frustrated by the artist's naivete as he struggles to articulate what is happening in his country, yet his rejection of jazz seems of a piece with his detached observer's stance. Is an intense engagement with culture a sufficient stance in itself? Is a refusal to take sides an act of cowardice, or the only honest reaction to a situation of great complexity? The issues are starker because we know that these characters are on the precipice of the Third Reich, but they illuminate (or complicate) contemporary issues as well. Lutes itself, it seems, has found a way to engage deeply while remaining true to his art; his work elevates the comics form to the most cogent cultural history, and the best fiction, which makes demands on the real world.
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Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
by Rebecca Solnit
This essay collection is yet another work I'd been meaning to read, but picked up with a bit of reluctant crankiness: am I really in the mood to read something this serious? But Solnit, whose writing I loved in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, is on fire here, and set me burning as well, with the gorgeous and horrifying intersections of place and politics that she illuminates. Partly it was because this is the kind of writing I have done and want to do: narrative nonfiction that makes little distinction between the familiar and the formal, that incorporates place and memory and philosophy and ethics and other parts of the human experience into pieces as structured and artful as poetry and as stirring as a great speech. Partly it because she is talking about hugely important issues that I suspect but don't know much about: the poisonous fallout of large-scale corporate mining, especially for gold; the need for (and difficulty of) architecture and urban design that creates human-scale communities; the out-of-fashion but still present problems of land grabs from Native Americans and nuclear testing and waste disposal in the Nevada desert. Here is an artist engaged.
I don't always agree with her assertions -- sometimes I'm arguing with her throughout an essay, sometimes I swallow it whole and only in talking about it afterward discover that I question some of her conclusions or assumptions. (One essay about Silicon Valley, for example, written in the early '90s, is full of interesting metaphorical connections but a little embarrassing in its judgements on the internet.) Most left me with more questions than answers. Why haven't I heard about this before? Who is responsible for this? If this isn't the right way to do things, then how? But each also left me with the satisfaction of a complete work of art: the kind I'd like to make. I'm still reading this one, still wrestling with Solnit as an activist and admiring her as a writer. It's good to get set on fire again.
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Moomin, Book 3
by Tove Jansson
Moomin is a comic strip with talking animals (or creatures of some kind -- the Moomins are more like Jeff Smith's Bone creatures than like the hippos they are occasionally, scandalously mistaken for). It is also not exactly for kids. Jansson's humor is sometimes wicked, her scenes often melancholy, and her worldview rather subversively anarchic. I've been reading this series as its been re-released by Drawn & Quarterly, and feel rather proprietarily fond of the fussy Mrs. Fillyjonk, the always lovesick Mymble, the practical but mean Little My, the outlaw Stinky, and of course Moominpappa (top-hat wearing, high-mindedly silly), Moominmamma (supremely competent but not at all fussy), Moomin himself (a wistful everyman) and Snorkmaiden (his on-and-off girlfriend, moody but loveable). In this volume they encounter an encroaching jungle (the animals are quite nice given a chance), move to a lighthouse (and back) for the sake of Pappa's great novel of the sea (which becomes a great novel of the veranda), deal with the vagaries of love (a leading lady seduces Moomin) and loyalty (Moominmamma finds herself a member of both a law-upholding and a law-breaking club). It seems silly, but this book was the one that made me happy to relax and engage in the comfort and chaos of family life. The ALP and me are a bit like the Moomins, I like to think: a little silly, a little chaotic, prone to wacky ideas that don't always pan out, not quite respectable, but awfully loving, and awfully happy. As a character says in the last panel of the book:"Indeed you are the most idiotic family I ever saw -- but you are at least living every minute of the day!!"
May the same be said of all of us. Thanks to these books for making the season bright, and here's to a new year full of magic, adventure, art, and engagement with the world.
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Tove's Jansson's A Winter Book is the perfect accompaniment to the earlier The Summer Book (Review). There are 20 stories in this collection, which is aimed squarely at adults, but would probably be enjoyed by older children. The book also comes with an introduction by Ali Smith, and Afterwords by Philip Pullman, Esther Freud and Frank Cottrell Boyce. The collection is divided into three parts: Snow; Flotsam and Jetsam; and Travelling Light - throughout each section Tove ages, so that the first story, "The Stone", features a young Tove, and in the last story, "Taking Leave", the by now elderly Tove is having to move to live on the mainland now she can no longer manage life on the bleak Finnish island she purchased after her Moominvalley books because a big success. Jansson trained as an artist and worked as a cartoonist, before writing the Moomin books in her 30s and 40s. She started writing for adults when she was in her 50s. In one of these stories, "Messages", she simply transcribes some of the bewildering messages that she receives from greedy companies and crazy, each one of whom wants to grab some part of her creation for themselves; one fan writes "Can't you draw me a Snufkin that I can have tattooed on my arm as a symbol of freedom?" whilst a company requests: "We look forward to your valued reply soonest concerning Moomin motifs on toilet paper in pastel shades" (Toilet paper?!)
"Taking Leave", is a short, melancholy, yet beautiful picture of old age. Jansson was 86 when she died in 2001, and I found it easy to imagine her striding energetically across her island until her old bones refused to take another step. In the story, two old women reach the irritating realisation that they have grown too infirm to continue spending their summers on their isolated island. Even worse, though, is the knowledge that "something unforgivable happened: I became afraid of the sea". The initial fury is followed by a calm acceptance and they decide to give away the house, packing up, leaving notes for the next occupant(s) which explain where to find things and how things work, whilst making sure not to explain everything too clearly: "one should not underestimate their natural curiosity." Another writer might have finished the story with a description of leaving the island, or of looking back from the boat for the last time as it heads to the mainland, but Jansson doesn't bother. Instead, she describes an old kite that they find on their last day whilst clearing out the cellar and which carry out into the open air. The wind snatches the kite and takes it away, up into the sky, across the sea, and out of sight, and they're gone.
This is a gorgeous book - the cover is very eye-catching and this is from someone who doesn't tend to take a huge amount of notice of bookcovers ! - and the whole book is packaged beautifully with a number of black and white photos inside.
Drawn and Quarterly has been the single greatest English language publisher of comics for 25 years.
“Drawn and Quarterly has been the single greatest English language publisher of comics for 25 years.”
Not even close — Fantagraphics has that title.
“in all it’s glory”
No apostrophe in possessive form, c’mon.
The Guy Delisle books are good fun. Going to have to pick this new one up, plus a couple of these other titles. Good stuff.