The Podgoblin’s Hat

The Last Dragon In The World

This story's title promises so much in terms of dragon content! In actuality there is hardly any dragon in this story, but what there is, is very good. Nina likes this story a lot anyway, Dave's more on the fence.
How understandable to want a small pet of your own, who would be attached just to you! How impossible to guarantee this outcome in any way, especially when said small pet is actually a wild thing and an endangered species to boot! We revisit some familiar themes: love triangles, the impossibility of having a secret, and the unswerving aim of a Little My throwing a pointed jab.
Our question for What Would Snufkin do was adapted from this AITA post on reddit
Our Spirits of the Moomins are Everything Is Alive and The Mab. Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is The Shrieking Shack.

Bonus #6 Ruby Miller

There's so much to say about The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters that we invited Ruby on to say some of it for us! We ponder on the exquisite combo that is cosy and creepy, lament the missed connection between Gaffsie and Fillyjonk and scribble all over our copies of Tales From Moomin Valley in pencil.
 
Ruby's Spirit of the Moomins is the folkloric art of John Bauer, and her Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is the Waterlands Podcast. She sings in the Ouseburn Folk Choir.

The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters

This week we're reading The Fillyjonk Who Believed in disasters, certified banger no matter who you ask! It's a melancholy, funny, poignant story that feels almost too real.
 
Join us as we relate a little too closely and discuss the anxiety and depression of this poor Fillyjonk. We talk about the beauty and liberation of destruction, bombed out cathedrals, and monastic lifestyles. Do we ever really learn from these experiences, or is it an endless cycle? Plus special Natural History Investigations.
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins are Stories by Firelight by Shirley Hughes and Campaign 2 of the actual play D&D show Critical Role. Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is Bookwandering with Anna James.

A Tale Of Horror

Carrying on with our read-through of Tales from Moomin Valley, our story this week is A Tale of Horror! But don't get too excited. The scariest thing about it is the Whomper's daddy.
This story, despite not being our favourite, gave us lots to yap about. We talked about how stories about lying affect children's truthfulness (see article here for more on Kang Lee's experiment, or read the abstract here), shifting standards in kid lit regarding discipline, in particular corporal punishment, and shared some stories about our own flexible relationships to the truth as children.
Our Spirits of the Moomins are The Sister Who Ate her Brothers by Jen Campbell, and the film Turning Red. Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is The Newbery Tart podcast.

Bonus #5 Matt Miller

To round off our spring miniseason we've got a final (for now) look at The Spring Tune, with special guest Matt Miller, a poet and theatre maker.
 
Matt's take on this story is fairly different from all the other takes we've heard so far! It's about smoking, doing the washing up, procrastination. We play a round of our unofficial but recurring game: which Moomin character do you feel painfully called out by? And have a think about what kind of participant Little My would be, if you put her in school and made her be in a poetry workshop.
 
Matt's Spirit of the Moomins is Impro by Keith Johnston. Their Spirits of the Podgoblin's Hat are Rusty Quill and Mark Can't Rap. You can find Matt on twitter @mattmiller2805 and on their website mattmillertheatre.com. 
 
The Podgoblin's Hat will be back later this year, when we will be continuing our read-through of the short story collection Tales from Moominvalley. The next short story will be A Tale Of Horror.

Bonus #4 Martin Zaltz Austwick

This week we've got a special guest in to talk all about the music of Tove Jansson, and the game we talked about last week (Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley) AND the short story that kicked off this miniseason (the Spring Tune). Martin is a musician, a podcaster, a player of games, so he is ideal for all this!
 
If you would like to listen along to the music, you'll want to start with this advert composed by Robert Farnon. Then visit this lovely Autumn Song by Tove Jansson and Erna Tauro. Henry Kathman's translation and cover of Snufkin's Spring Song can be found here. The video essay Dave was referring to is here. Finally, wrap your ears around the not unchallenging Moomin Voices album.
 
Martin's Spirit of the Moomins is The Wind by Fil Corbitt. His Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is Noah Caldwell-Gervais. You can find his own music at Pale Bird. His podcasts are Song by Song and Neutrino Watch. 

Bonus #3 Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

We're popping in with something a little different for you this week, it's a video game review! That's right, we're almost topical!
 
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley is a beautiful, relaxing, not quite open world exploration of Moomin Valley through the eyes and musical instruments of Snufkin. We discuss the way it feels, the way it looks, the way it sounds. Dave has some nitpicks. We wonder how canon the good ship SnufMin is to these game developers. Did the Groke really break Nina's Switch?!
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins this week are games. Nina's is Untitled Goose Game and Dave's is Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is The End of the World Book Club.
 
The reddit post Dave was talking about can be found here.

The Spring Tune

The crocuses are up, the cherry trees are in bloom, and Snufkin is tramping back to Moomin Valley - it must be time for our spring miniseries!
 
We're kicking off with this beautiful, perfectly formed gem of a short story from the collection Tales from Moomin Valley. It's a story about creativity, inspiration, song writing, and how big you need to be to get a name.
 
We namecheck a lot of books in this one! A non exhaustive list: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes.
 
Our Spirits of the Moomins are The Girl Who Helped Thunder and Other Native American Stories by James Bruchac and Joseph Bruchac, and the songs of Regina Spektor. Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is Song by Song.

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.