The Podgoblin’s Hat

The Fir Tree

We're wrapping up this year on the Podgoblin's Hat with Tove's Christmas offering: The Fir Tree.
 
It's got everything you want from a Christmas story: the light and the dark, the fear and the wonder. There's even a little cameo from the Moomin family gun.
 
We chat about different translations of this story, we exchange presents and talk at length about egg nog.
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins this Week are The Father Christmas Letters by JRR Tolkien, the Muppets Christmas Carol, and Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson. Our Spirits of the Podgoblin's Hat is The Last Christmas, the final episode of Dave's other podcast Getting Better Acquainted. 

Moominland Midwinter (part 2)

We're wrapping up Moominland Midwinter this week, and despite being only three chapters, it's 70% of the words in this book, so do strap in for a mammoth episode.
 
There's a whole raft of new characters: the lonely and the rum, a flock of small creep, a very melancholy dog and a jock Hemulen. Misunderstandings and unrequited longings abound. Moomintroll finally gets to grips with the snow. Little My invents ice skating. And we finally get to hear what Mamma thinks about it all. Perhaps the real winter was the friends we made along the way. Or maybe, as per Too Ticky, one has to discover everything for oneself, and get over it all alone.
 
Our spirits of the Moomins this week are Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm and Bob's Burgers, an animated sitcom. Our spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is the blog series The Percy Jackson Project by Talia Franks.

Moominland Midwinter (part 1)

Welcome to series 3! We're back with a banger: Moominland Midwinter. Nina has had this book hyped up by everyone who knows she's doing this podcast, and despite all the hype it doesn't disappoint.
 
In this first half of the book, the unthinkable happens: Moomintroll awakes from his hibernation and finds himself alone in a world of winter. It is as if he has rolled out into outer space.
 
This is such a beautiful meditation on loneliness, and change, and uncertainty. We've got a great new character in Too-Ticky, and of course the whole show is stolen by recurring character Little My.
 
Our spirits of the Moomins this week are Nimona (the animated film) from Dave and two short stories from Nina: The Horse in the Snow by Jeanette Winterson and the Snow Horse by Joan Aiken.

The Dangerous Journey & Villain In The Moominhouse

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. This is a more typical story shape for the Moomins, except it's all set inside the Moominhouse. Little My is awakened by a horrible smell - eventually the whole house is roused to search out the pungent intruder. Again, we have characters from all different Moomin books and comics humbled together, in a very much larger than canon house. This book is a photo picture book: each illustration was staged inside a large Moomin dolls house that Tove worked on in collaboration with her friends. It's more of a sculpture than a book?
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins this week are The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon by David Almond (honourable mention to How to Stay Sober When You'd Rather Be Dead which you can borrow from overdrive here), Where the Wild Things Are (the movie). And Nina's Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is All About Agatha.

The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My & Who Will Comfort Toffle

We're breaking from our normal format for these next two episodes to bring you Tove Jansson's picture books.
 
The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My is really ahead of its time in terms of interactivity and the use of holes cut out of the pages. It's a simple enough journey story, and a vehicle for some really gorgeous art. We compare the translation from the 1960s with the more modern text in our newer editions. There's very creative versification and some brand new Hattifattener lore!
 
And if it's true to say that that first book showcases Tove's love of colour, that's even more true of Who Will Comfort Toffle?. Toffle is a small grey creature living in a big colourful world. He always feels on the outside of everything. Pointillism abounds in the black and white pictures of Toffle's fearful little world. Snufkin has a cameo and he's swapped his mouth organ for a silver flute - what is up with that? Ultimately it's a story about the wisdom and strength that love brings.
 
For obvious reasons, there are a lot more pictures to share than usual this week, so we recommend you find us on twitter and instagram to see all that stuff.
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins this week are the game Gris and Press Here by Herve Tullet. Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is She-Ra: Progressive of Power.

Moominsummer Madness (part 2)

Content note: discussion of suicidal thoughts in the What Would Snufkin do part of the podcast 
This book splits three ways on Midsummer Eve: Snufkin is enacting revenge on a Park Keeper, Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden are having a party with a Fillyjonk, and the rest of our crew are still aboard the floating theatre.
There's so much about theatre in this book: a play within a play, a lion being played by two beavers, a disastrous dress rehearsal and happy endings all round.
We talk about the effects of responsibility on Snufkin (spoiler: he hates it) and there's some light prison abolitionism.
It's a banger. You should definitely read this one.
Our Spirits this week are Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, How It Ends and Wizard Team, a black fantasy podcast from Black Nerds Create.

Moominsummer Madness (part 1)

It's summer in Moominvalley and this book truly hits the ground running. There's a volcano casually going off in the background, and another flood, and the Moomin family has to relocate to a strange floating house. Also, Snufkin is nowhere to be found and Moomintroll is pining away. 
 
We've got a bunch of cool new characters, some magical midsummer traditions, and a lot of theatrical superstitions. Dave is taking a new occasional rubrik out for a spin: it's the Clothes Corner!... Nina's usual Botany Corner is also here, and it's all about mosses and lichens.
 
Our Spirits this week are Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio, The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones, and So I Got To Thinking, a Sex and the City podcast by Juno Dawson and Dylan B Jones.

The Exploits (or Memoirs) of Moominpappa, part 2

We're back with the second half of Moominpappa's memoirs, in which our brave hero becomes the subject of a country run by an Autocrat, starts a colony and meets his wife.
Moomintroll has some very sensible notes for his Pappa in this half of the book, Sniff has some very good questions, but alas, we will never know why Moominmamma was in the sea.
 
Our question for Snufkin this week comes from Helen Zaltzman.
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins are Edward Carey's The Swallowed Man and Alice Tarbuck's A Spell in the Wild. Nina's other podcast, Even the Trunchbull, is our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat.

The Exploits (or Memoirs) of Moominpappa (part 1)

Welcome back to a new season of the Podgoblin's Hat! This week, Nina is reading the Exploits of Moominpappa and Dave is reading the Memoirs of Moominpappa. Our theme for these books is Memoir.
 
This episode is all about unreliable narrators, self mythologising and the fundamental mystery of our parents. Moominpappa has finally finished his memoirs and is reading them out to the children. Did he really build a Moomin house, or did he just draw it? How much of this story is true?
We have a question for Snufkin from upcoming guest Martin Zaltz Austwick, who you can find here.
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins are both memoirs: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr. Dave's spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is Down to a Sunless Sea.
 

Bonus #2 Dr Eleanor Janega

Our special guest for this episode is Medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega. Eleanor joins us to shout about how much she loves Comet in Moominland, share her Moomin memes of choice and talk about how Tove Jansson draws on medieval storytelling tropes like weird little guys you find in the woods, comets, and really good food writing. There is a case made for Moominmamma as an agony aunt and a scathing burn for Ian Fleming.
 
You can find Eleanor's on twitter @GoingMedieval, buy her new book The Once and Future Sex here and her comic The Middle Ages: A Graphic History here. She also has her own podcast We're Not So Different.
 
The Podgoblin's Hat will return in August with season two, which kicks off with The Memoirs of Moominpappa / The Exploits of Moominpappa. We'll tell you about both versions of the story so you can pick which one to seek out and read!