> "She even made some of the characters especially tiny to elevate the landscapes." wish there were more examples of this in the images shown in the article.
But then again, I grew up with the Moomins.
I can see why Tolkien lovers are upset at these even though I'm not really one of them.
This despite the fact that some names and elements were re-used. He often cycled the same names around until he found where they fit. Which also makes reading early drafts of the Hobbit fun when Thorin was named Gandalf.
The moomins starts with a great flood that washes them all away to live in a new place (I think this is a parallel to the Finns moving out of Karelia after the war. I believe this was the largest migration of people that had occured at the time, and it has been described as causing generational trauma to the Finnish).
In addition I believe MoominPappa deals with issues of depression or something?
I'm guessing you haven't read all the books in the series, because there are some seriously dark themes in there - and unlike in Tolkien, the protagonists are completely helpless when facing them. No epic battle in which magical eagles show up to save the day.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing more of her illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark (the latter is a great poem if you haven't read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29888/29888-h/29888-h.htm)
As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
The dragon scene is wonderful and captures the situation.
The dwarves are a bit dopy looking but I think could cohere with the early introduction in the Hobbit.
This is addressed in the article. "Paul Gravett writes in his new book about Tove Jansson: ‘Her Gollum towered monstrously large, to the surprise of Tolkien himself, who realized that he had never clarified Gollum’s size and so amended the second edition to describe him as ‘a small, slimy creature’."
We have Jansson to thank for the clarification, it seems!
The man took retcons as an intellectual challenge. Sometimes the retcon itself spun off a whole new story. But it makes The Hobbit really incompatible with its own sequel, even after his changes. (You have to read it as having a very unreliable narrator.)
kwertyoowiyop•2d ago