Fans celebrate the 80th birthday of the Moomins, Finland's most lovable literary cartoon family
The chubby, white, hippopotamus-like characters have captivated readers worldwide since author and illustrator Tove Jansson published 'The Moomins and the Great Flood' in 1945. The children's book featuring Moomintroll and Moominmamma in their search for the missing Moominpappa.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Book Review: A private eye investigates whether her husband sent an innocent man to prison
Joe Green is serving time for killing his ex-wife's divorce lawyer, but he claims he didn't do it. Nick Carelli, the Chicago homicide detective who put him away, figures that's what they all say. Meanwhile, Annalisa Vega's business is short on customers. It seems people with problems that need investigating are loathe to hire a private detective who is visibly pregnant. So when Green reaches out to Annalisa for help, she reluctantly takes his case. Initially, the only thing she has to go on is an anonymous letter sent to Green that claims the eyewitness who testified against him was lying. 'Gone in the Night' is Joanna Schaffhausen's fifth novel featuring Annalisa, and fans of the series already know that the protagonist's family life is complicated. Among other things, her brother is in prison, her extended family can't quite forgive her for putting him there, and she's trying to make a go of it again with Nick after kicking him to curb for his rampant infidelity. When she suggests that Nick got the Joe Green case wrong, her life gets even more complicated. While Annalisa tries to figure out who killed the divorce lawyer, Nick investigates a series of new murders in which men are bludgeoned or stabbed and dumped into Lake Michigan. Their investigations lead both Annalisa and Nick to a women's shelter where they find the staff secretive and misleading — perhaps because they are fiercely protective of the women they serve or perhaps because they have something to hide. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. As the story unfolds at a torrid pace, Annalisa and Nick soon find themselves in danger. Suspense builds, and plot twists abound. While the story is certainly entertaining, the author also has a serious purpose, illustrating how difficult it can be for abused women to find either help or justice. ___ Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including 'The Dread Line.' ___ AP book reviews:
Toronto Star
4 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Book Review: ‘The Dilemmas of Working Women' depicts the inner struggles of women in Japan
This cover image released by HarperOne shows 'The Dilemmas of Working Women' by Fumio Yamamoto. (HarperOne via AP) flag wire: true flag sponsored: false article_type: : sWebsitePrimaryPublication : publications/toronto_star bHasMigratedAvatar : false :
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Book Review: Debut novelist Aisha Muharrar deftly explores love and loss in ‘Loved One'
I picked up a copy of 'Loved One' based solely on the fact that its first-time author, Aisha Muharrar, was involved in three television comedies that made me laugh: 'Hacks,''Parks and Recreation' and 'The Good Place.' The opening scene of 'Loved One' could be a set piece on any of those shows, as we jump inside the head of our narrator, 30-year-old Julia, who is delivering the eulogy at a friend's funeral, a popular indie musician at the time of his death. She thinks in pop culture tropes. 'Gabe and I were actual friends… We weren't the kind of friends who were never really friends. The kind of friends you see in a romantic comedy where there are two incredibly attractive people who are deeply emotionally invested in each other, and we're supposed to believe they have never once considered the idea of sexual intercourse.' Julia next goes to the bathroom and ends up needing to borrow a tampon from Elizabeth, a British woman Gabe had been dating for more than a year at the time of his accidental death. (He slipped and hit his head on a marble sink when exiting the shower of an L.A. hotel.) Elizabeth's words to Julia in their brief bathroom encounter set the rest of the story in motion: 'I know exactly who you were to Gabe.' After some required background about how Julia and Gabe met at a program for arts and architectural students in Barcelona in the summer between high school and college, Julia is on her way to London to retrieve a few of Gabe's things at the request of Gabe's grieving mother. 'I was a set of house keys buried at the bottom of a purse, finally plucked out, jangling with a purpose,' is the poetic way Muharrar describes Julia's feelings as she heads overseas. Once in London, the story takes on an almost buddy comedy feel, with Julia and Elizabeth warily befriending one another as they attempt to collect mementos of Gabe's — from a guitar he once played to a Mets cap he wore. We stay inside Julia's head most of the time, as she travels around London, still delivering inner monologues wrapped in her pop-culture sensibility: 'I liked learning a new tidbit about him. It was never-before-seen footage that kept the movie of his life rolling.' As the two women get to know one another, we as readers get to know more about their relationships with Gabe, and especially what happened in the final month or so before his death. Muharrar's work developing her main characters throughout the story allows her to explore deeper themes of grief and loss in the final third of the book without too much sentimentality. Closure may be too much to ask for these grieving women, but it's enough that they realize they still have lives to live without the object of the book's title. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. ___ AP book reviews:
