The internationally renown author Tove Jansson published her first Moomin story in 1945: ‘The Moomins and the Great Flood.’ The Moomins are easy going creatures with recognizable human qualities. They are a tight-knit, eccentric family with a number of disparate relatives, ancestors and friends.
They live in the idyllic Moominvalley. Over the years eight more books and three illustrated books about the Moomin Family were to follow. The books were written for children and have been translated into 44 languages. In 1959 the first Moomin television series was aired in Germany. A number of other Moomin television series for children were to follow with the Japanese animation TV-series (1990) being broadcasted in 124 countries.
In 1954 Tove Jansson began publishing the Moomin comic strips. The target audience for this social and political satire was adults. The world’s largest newspaper at that time, London’s The Evening News began publishing the Moomin comic strips, which reached up to 20 million readers daily in over 40 countries. The strips were published for 20 years. All in all over 800 strips were produced. The comic strip reached out to adults with its gentle and droll sense of humor. Whimsical but with biting undertones, Jansson’s observations of everyday life, including guests who overstay their welcome, modern art, movie stars, and high society, easily caught the attention of an international audience and continue to resonate today.
Even though the stories and the characters have become classics, the fine-tuned original content of the strips will be released for the first time in an audiovisual form with the ‘Moomins on the Riviera’ feature film.
See also Tove Jansson virtual museum.