Moominvalley in November
Read Moominvalley in November Online
Authors: Tove Jansson
Tags: #General, #Fantasy, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Family, #Classics, #Children's Stories; Swedish, #Friendship, #Seasons, #Concepts, #Fantasy Fiction; Swedish
PUFFIN BOOKS
Moominvalley in November
Tove Jansson was born in helsingfors, finland, in 1914. Her mother was a caricaturist (and designed 165 of finland's stamps) and her father was a sculptor. Tove Jansson 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
THE EXPLOITS OF MOOMINPAPPA
MOOMINLAND MIDWINTER
MOOMINSUMMER MADNESS
TALES FROM MOOMINVALLEY
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
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Sent i November
first published 1971
First published in English by Ernest Benn Ltd 1971
Published in Puffin Books 1974
17
Copyright (c) Tove Jansson, 1971
English translation copyright (c) Ernest Benn Ltd, 1971
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: 978-0-14-191567-8
TO
MY BROTHER
LASSE
NARRATIVE
CHAPTER 12
Thunder and Lightning
CHAPTER 14
Looking for the Family
CHAPTER 1
Snufkin
EARLY
one morning in Moominvalley Snufkin woke up in his tent with the feeling that autumn had come and that it was time to break camp.
Breaking camp in this way comes with a hop, skip and a jump! All of a sudden everything is different, and if you're going to move on you're careful to make use of every single minute, you pull up your tent pegs and douse the fire quickly before anyone can stop you or start asking questions, you start running, pulling on your rucksack as you go, and finally you're on your way and suddenly quite calm, like a solitary tree with every single leaf completely still. Your camping-site is an empty rectangle of bleached grass. Later in the morning your friends wake up and say: he's gone away, autumn's coming.
Snufkin padded along calmly, the forest closed round him and it began to rain. The rain fell on his green hat and on his raincoat, which was also green, it pittered and pattered everywhere and the forest wrapped him in a gentle and exquisite loneliness.
There were many valleys along the coast. The mountains rolled down to the sea in long stately curves to promontories and bays which cut deep into the wild country. In one of these valleys a fillyjonk lived all by herself. Snufkin had met many fillyjonks in his time and knew that they had to do things in their own way and according to their own silly rules. But he was never so quiet as when he went past the house of a fillyjonk.
The fence had straight and pointed posts and the gate was locked. The garden was quite empty. The clothes-line had been taken in and the woodpile had gone. There was no hammock and no garden furniture. There was none of the charming disorder that generally surrounds a house in summer, no rake, no bucket, no left-behind hat, no saucer for the cat's milk, none of the other homely things that lie around waiting for the next day and make the house look welcoming and lived in.
Fillyjonk knew that autumn had arrived, and she shut herself up inside. Her house looked completely closed and deserted. But she was there, deep deep inside behind the high impenetrable walls and the dense fir-trees that hid her windows.
The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It's a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you've got in as many supplies as you can. It's nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their
