The Podgoblin’s Hat

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.

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.