Moominsummer Madness
Read Moominsummer Madness Online
Authors: Tove Jansson
Tags: #General, #Fantasy, #Fantasy Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Trolls, #Nature & the Natural World, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Family, #Classics, #Moomins (Fictitious Characters), #Friendship, #Children's Literature; Finnish, #Forests, #Foods, #Children's Stories; Finnish, #Floods
PUFFIN BOOKS
Moominsummer Madness
Tove Jansson was barn in Helsingfors, Finland, in 1914. Her mother was a caricaturist who designed 165 of finland's stamps and her father was a sculptor. She studied painting in Finland, Sweden and France. She lived alone on a Small island in the gulf of Finland, where most of her books were written.
Tove Jansson died in June 2001.
Other books by Tove Jansson
FINN FAMILY MOOMINTROLL
COMET IN MOOMINLAND
MOOMINLAND MIDWINTER
TALES FROM MOOMINVALLEY
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
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, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England
First published in English by Ernest Benn Ltd 1955
Published in Puffin Books 1971
28
This translation copyright (c) Ernest Benn Ltd, 1955
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-191145-8
TO VIVICA
CONTENTS
About a bark boat and a volcano
About learning to live in a haunted house
About vanity and the dangers of sleeping in trees
About the consequences of whistling on the stage
About the dangers of Midsummer Night
CHAPTER 1
About a bark boat and a volcano
M
OOMINMAMMA
was sitting on the front steps in the sun, rigging a model bark schooner.
'One big sail on the mainmast, and one on the mizzen, and several small three-cornered ones to the bowsprit, if I remember rightly,' she thought.
The rudder was a ticklish job, and the hold an odder one. Moominmamma had cut a tiny bark hatch, and when she laid it on it fitted snugly and neatly over the hold.
'Just in case of a hurricane,' she said to herself with a happy sigh.
By her side on the steps, knees under chin, sat the Mymble's daughter, looking on. She saw Moominmamma next tack the stays with small glass-headed pins, each of a different colour. The mast-heads were already flying bright red pennants.
'For whom is it?' asked the Mymble's daughter respectfully.
'For Moomintroll,' replied his Mamma, and searched her work-basket for something for an anchor cable.
'Don't push me about!' cried a small voice from the basket.
'Dear me,' said Moominmamma, 'here's your little sister in my work-basket again! She's going to hurt herself on the pins and needles one day.'
'My!' said the Mymble's daughter menacingly and tried to pull her sister out of a skein of wool. 'Come out at once!'
But Little My managed to crawl deeper into the wool, where she disappeared completely.
'Such a nuisance she turned out so very small,' complained the Mymble's daughter. 'I never know where to look for her. Couldn't you make a bark boat for her, too? She could sail in the water barrel, and I'd always know where she is.'
Moominmamma laughed and looked in her handbag for another piece of bark.
'Do you think this would hold Little My?' she asked.
'Certainly,' said the Mymble's daughter. 'But you'll have to make a small life-belt as well.'
'May I cut up your knitting ball?' shouted Little My from the sewing-basket.
'By all means,' replied Moominmamma. She was admiring her schooner and wondered if she had forgotten anything. As she sat holding it in her paw a big black flake of soot came floating down and landed amidships on the deck.
'Ugh,' said Moominmamma and blew it away. Immediately another flake landed on her snout. Suddenly the air was full of soot.
Moominmamma rose with a sigh.
'So very annoying, this volcano,' she remarked.
'Volcano?' asked Little My, and thrust an interested head out of the wool.
'Yes, it's a mountain not so very far from here, and all of a sudden it's begun spitting fire and smoke over the whole valley,' explained Moominmamma. 'And soot. It's always
kept quiet and good ever since I married. And now, after all these years, exactly when I've finished my washing, it has to sneeze once again and blacken all the things I hang out.'
'Everybody's burning up!' shouted Little My happily, 'And everybody's houses and gardens and playthings and little sisters and their playthings!'
'Fiddlesticks,' said Moominmamma genially and whisked away another speck of soot from her snout.
Then she went off to look for Moomintroll.
*
Under the slope, a little to the right of Moominpappa's hammock tree, was a large pond of clear, brown water. The Mymble's daughter always insisted that it had no bottom in the middle. Perhaps she was right. Around the edges broad and shining leaves grew for dragonflies and skimming-beetles to rest on, and below the surface spidery creatures used to row wrigglingly along, trying to look important. Further down the pond-frog's eyes glinted like gold, and sometimes you could catch a quick glimpse of her mysterious relatives that lived deep down in the mud.
