Meet the Mumins

Meet the Mumins! They are a family of 3 white-hippos looking alike creatures - Moominpappa, Moominmamma and Moomintroll - , carefree and adventurous, curious and nature lovers. The creatures created by the Swedish-speaking Tove Jonsson and later her brother Lars Jonsson, they are considered a symbol of Finland, with a thematic park dedicated to them in Naantali.

Compared to other graphic novels that I devoured, my first encounter with the Mumins, through the volume 9 of the series published a couple of years ago by Reprodukt edition house in Germany, specialized in this genre of literature, wasn't memorable and not even encouraged me to run to the library for reserving the rest of the collection. Actually, it took me a long time to decide to continue with the stories, but I was strongly driven by the curiosity to explore a famous national literary brand.

Apparently, the style of the stories changed from a story to another, with more topics explored including of political and social nature. For instance, in my book, it was approached the issue of colonialism and democracy. The dialogues are usually simple and every snippet has a lot of action going on. 

As the topics approached are relatively complex, I recommend to read it after 9-10 years old. The Mumins are easy going and can be easily resonate with many one-child families.

Probably, my only problem with them is that they are not necessarily my cup of graphic novels, which means either too sophisticated politically or displaying beautiful illustrations for first time readers.

However, I would definitely would be curious to read more critique about them and interpretation of their inclusion part of the Finnish national literary Pantheon.