A couple weeks ago, for two days, I looked after my friend’s son. He is 19 months. While eating his lunch I lent him a moomintroll spoon (with the figure at the top of the handle), I thought it might be fun. I pointed to the figure and said “this is moo-min”. He paused, then looked at me, pointed and said “mah-mih”. Very clever I thought.
Next, he noticed a moomintroll bank on the fridge. I gave him the bank to hold while eating: he didn’t make a mess because he preferred to hold the moomin to throwing food around. He looked at me and repeated “mah-mih” several times. I praised him and repeated “mOO-miN”.
My friend’s son loves to read, he has lots of books. I pulled out the book The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My and we read it about seven times! He pointed out moomin correctly each time, and when I pointed to an owl he said “woo-woo”. I told him he was very clever.
On the second day, while eating, he noticed the twenty moomin mugs on a shelf above the sink…my goodness his eyes grew to the size of watermelons!
About a week later I gave him two moomin books, the ones with lots of text and some nice drawings. He remembered the moomins. I was astonished.
Today, I learn that he is mad about moomins. He was saying “mah-mih, mah-min” and it took his mom a bit to figure out what he was saying. One of the books I gave him is 130 pages long and he demanded that he and his mom ‘read’ it twice in a row.
I became aquanted with the moomins in adulthood (being from
The people that I know who met the moomins in childhood are just as crazy about them today. It looks like the magic of the moomins will be with him for a long time.
The following are some photos of moomin comics and one magazine from 1957. If you would like more information on the images, please leave a comment.
3 comments:
Oh, this boy is genius!
Lovely post and images.
Thanks for posting this!
You're welcome Julie. Enjoy.
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