Getting Better Acquainted

This is the twelth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts. To wrap up season two we are bringing you the last two picture books set in the Moomin universe written by Tove Jansson. Both of these books are a bit difficult and inaccessible! They're very interesting to Moomin fans in that they show the later stages of Tove's journey with her little trolls, and how she felt about them towards the end of her life. The Dangerous Journey is a portal fantasy that sees human girl Susanna enter the Moomin world and travel through a series of gorgeously bleak watercolor landscapes. The Moomins are barely in this, and when they do appear, it's time for Susanna to go. We talk about the many influences on the art and writing of Jansson and read the book as a kind of retrospective of her life. Villain in the Moominhouse has no official translation into English and is kind of hard to find! You can read a fan translation by Teresa Ronayne here: