The summer book

Format:

Book

Title:

The summer book

Uniform Title:

Sommarboken. English

Author:

Jansson, Tove.

ISBN:

9781590172681

9781439513071

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

xii, 170 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

Series title(s):

New York Review Books classics.

Contents:

Introduction -- The morning swim -- Moonlight -- The magic forest -- The scolder -- Berenice -- The pasture -- Playing Venice -- Dead calm -- The cat -- The cave -- The road -- Midsummer -- The tent -- The neighbor -- The robe -- The enormous plastic sausage -- The crooks -- The visitor -- Of angleworms and others -- Sophia's storm -- Day of danger -- August.

Summary:

"This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia's grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland."--Publisher's description.

Subject(s):

Girls -- Fiction.

Grandmothers -- Fiction.

Grandparent and child -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Genre:

Added Author:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Mount Angel Public Library	JANSSON	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer--its sunlight and storms--into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia's grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, write a fanciful study of local bugs. They discuss things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. "On an island," thinks the grandmother, "everything is complete." In The Summer Book , Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of life.

Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll comic strip and books brought her international acclaim, lived for much of her life on an island like the one described in The Summer Book , and the work can be enjoyed as her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.

The Summer Book is translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.

Author Notes

Tove Jansson has received the Hans Christian Andersen prize for children's literature. The world of the Moomintroll has become internationally famous thanks to her brilliant sense of humor and fabulous illustrations. The delightful Moomintrolls make it through catastrophe after catastrophe through cooperation and plain luck. Although Jansson is best known for her children's books, her adult fiction is equally entertaining.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Ms. Jansson, who wrote those ""Moominland"" fancies for children, has directed her inventive hook-and-button plain talk at some adult concerns. In this series of brief dialogues and adventures of Grandmother (85) and Sophia (ten), the second childhood parallels the first in new awarenesses and incipient rebellion; but on the lonely way of the aging, hobbled by physical frailty, there are moments of sudden, inexplicable sadness. Grandmother and Sophia for the most part are honest contemporaries; they forage on their nearly isolated island, plot and explore, solemnly converse and flare up at one another: ""Shall I tell [your father] how you were brave?"" asks Grandmother. ""You can tell it on your deathbed so it doesn't go to waste,"" says Sophia. ""That's a bloody good idea,"" decides Grandmother. But while the family (the father is there but not heard from) goes about island survival and diversions -- the lights of Midsummer Eve, drought, a flood and storms, an alien neighbor -- Grandmother tentatively exposes herself to feelings about life and its endings: ""Unless I tell [a tale from my youth] . . . it gets closed off and then it's lost."" She is puzzled by an elderly friend's calm: "". . . don't you ever get curious? Or upset? Or simply terrified?"" Old woman and child edge toward their own thresholds, and at the close Grandmother is resting and waiting. Spindrift perceptions, fresh and penetrating. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.