last night owen & i finished reading our first chapter book together-- moominpapa at sea. we had run into moominmania over in scandanavia and got our first moomin book at junibacken along with some other treasure tomes. when we were in helsinki, finland in july we made the pilgirmage to the moomin shop and decided to get something we'd all enjoy this as a bedtime saga-- after all, moominpapa at sea is about how the funny little moomin family gets on their boat the adventurer (insert plane here) and sets sail for a dot on the map where there's nothing but a lighthouse and the sea and the weather, with boats in the far distance. it reminded us of our norwegian "boat" room, watching the hurtigurten dock outside our window, snuggling up in one big bed and where the rain came every day and the sun never set. . .
but enough nostalgia, owen is clamoring over me to tell his side of the story, and to keep me focused on the story. here's the book as owen explains it (he's making sure i write every word):[warning! spoiler alert!]
there are three moomins: moominmama, moominpapa and moomintroll. there is also little my. moominmama paints flowers on the lighthouse walls. moominpapa is writing about the sea in his notebook. moomintroll he gives the groke the lamp outside. the groke loves the lantern outside. and the fisherman is really the lighthouse keeper! my favorite part is the sea horses because moomintroll watches them dance. the funniest part is when the ligthouse keeper puts on moominpapa's hat! oh, and i love the part with the ocean gives them a gift (what are those sticks of wood called?) oh driftwood! that was magic!
and here's my summary with some thoughts as well-- the moomins leave their grove because life has gotten too easy, too predictable. moominpapa in particular feels unimportant and that his family doesn't need him. they find an island on a map and set out on this adventure. the island and the sea work their hardest to make life inhabitable--the roses moominmama brought won't grow (so she paints a garden inside the stark lighthouse walls instead), the peaceful hollow moomintroll finds is inhabited by red ants, and the sea washes devastates any attempt at making the island home. they are utterly alone on the island with a few exceptions--the beautiful sea horses that moomintroll wants to befriend (but he learns they are vain creatures who are only meant to exist in his imagination), the icy groke that is drawn to moomintroll's lantern and freezes everything in his path out of fear (but becomes his unexpected friend and the better dancer after all) and the fisherman who avoids the lighthouse and the moomins with nothing short of hostility (but he too isn't what he seems!). the lighthouse has been abandoned and all traces of the lighthouse keeper show a lonely, and at times, terrified man who has mysteriously vanished. and to top it all off, the lighthouse won't light.
so, the driftwood and the magic--the sea (which has been terrorizing the island so much that all of the plants and bushes literally up and move away from the shore until they are clinging to the walls of the lighthouse so that the moomins can barely get in and out) finally destroys the fisherman's home and leads to a (i think this is the denoument if i remember my book reporting) a confrontation between moominpapa and the sea. moominpapa has been obsessively keeping a notebook to "understand" the sea (conducting all kinds of experiments and trying to devise equations that lead only to more questions) and not until the angry storm does he lay down and realize the island has a heartbeat. moominpapa approaches the sea, not in hopes of mastery but in defense of the entire island:
You've pestered us in every way you can, but it hasn't worked. We're getting along somehow, in spite of you. I've learnt to understand you, and that's what you don't like, do you? And we haven't given up, have we? By the way. . . to be perfectly fair, it was jolly jecent of you to give us that crate of whisky. I know why you did: you knwo when you're beaten, don't you? But to get your own back by taking it out of the island was a petty thing to do. Now, I'm only saying all this because--well-because I like you.
The sea responds by sending a plank of driftwood--and then another, and another. This was one of our favorite parts--and then we started to suspect the fisherman was really the lighthouse keeper all along. It ends with the fisherman-lighthouse keeper's birthday and the moomins give him a party. The cycle of loneliness and isolation is broken and the now-named lighthouse keeper goes up to the lighthouse loft, moomintroll goes to see the groke even though he doesn't have any more parrafin in the lamp, moominpapa goes out on his ledge and they see the lighthouse lit for the first time. . .
And I'll stop here because owen wants me to write:
Moominpapa is just a sea guy.
tonight we began James and The Giant Peach!
(funny enough, we read Roald Dahl's Boy on our first stay in Norway--it was one of the few English books at the ark bookshop--where he talks about growing up in Norway and eating pickled herring for breakfast!)
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