As I grow older, I realised I missed out on a lot of childhood classics, mostly because I stuck to Enid Blyton (and CS Lewis) when I was a kid. I only read Anne of Green Gables in 2018, after seeing loads of positive talk about her in the blogsophere, and I only started reading Diana Wynne Jones after reading her book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing. I write all this to emphasise that I shouldn’t be surprised that I haven’t read Moomin before, even though I adored the Moomin Cafe in Fukuoka when it was still around (it had the best fresh baked bread and the bread was free flow!)

In Moominpapa by the Sea, Moominpapa is feeling like a lot of us – kind of lost and a bit envious that everyone else around him knows what they are supposed to be doing. And so, he decides to move his whole family to an island on the sea in search of the feeling that he wants to have, though the move doesn’t go too well. Moominpapa can’t turn on the lighthouse, Moominmama doesn’t have her garden, Moomintroll wants a glade inhabited by ants (and to make friends with seahorses) and only Littlemy seems to be at ease.

My favourite character was Moominmama, who goes above and beyond for her family. She really does her best to make Moominpapa happy, and I can see that even as she is distracted by the imaginary garden that she has created, she still automatically responds to Moomintroll with maternal love. Perhaps not the way that he needed, or the way that she could have if she was her normal self, but definitely better than how Moominpapa did, given that he was very caught up in his emotions.

Littlemy was also very interesting and I would read another Moomin book just to find out more about her. She can seem a bit bad at times, but she is her own person and she does seem to be rather free and unaffected by the malaise that affects the other Moomin family.

Because I first read about it in A Short Guide to Philosophical Classics, I already knew that this was going to be a voyage of self-discovery. Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps my perception of the book was heavily influenced by this interpretation of it, and I would have just thought of it as a unique, charming children’s book if I picked it up having heard a different set of ideas.

Honestly, this was a strange but charming little book. I’m used to children’s books being about adventures, even if it’s just small ones like going on a houseboat. This book, on the other hand, is really about a family feeling out of place after moving to a new place. Personally, I found it very thoughtful but I’m wondering if younger me would have taken to this book.