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| Illustrator | Tove Jannson |
| Translator | Thomas Warburton |
| First Written | 1957 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | Finland |
| Publisher | Square Fish |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0312625412 |
| My Copy | paperback |
| First Read | July 28, 2021 |
Moominland Midwinter
Tooticky even makes a sacrificial horse out of snow for the Lady of the Cold!
Noted on July 28, 2021
There's a mysterious figure, the Great Cold, that is said to arrive at the dead of winter. The other characters are warned to stay indoors. The Great Cold comes in the form of The Lady of the Cold, and it's such a pleasing, mythic telling. It's like the angel of death in Egypt, or hiding in the cleft of a rock.
There's a squirrel who is too forgetful and curious to heed the warnings, he goes out to meet her. The Lady looks kindly at him, and he dies, of course, frozen to death.
It puts a really, uh, aesthetically pleasing pagan spin on the extremities of the Earth. That brutal heat wave or polar vortex is personified into a great god - yes, the Tornado is beautiful and mysterious - but none may look upon him and live!
Noted on July 28, 2021
Picked this up to reread after telling John about it - the intense melancholy of Moomin waking up in the winter when all his family are dead asleep hibernating, and the world is transformed and unrecognizable.
Noted on July 28, 2021
The Dweller Under the Sink had still not come out to eat but was probably living a secret and important life by himself.
Quoted on July 28, 2021
'The world’s asleep,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘It’s only I who am awake and sleepless. It’s only I who have to wander and wander, day after day and week upon week, until I too become a snowdrift that no one will even know about.'
Quoted on July 28, 2021
Now came spring, but not at all as he had imagined its coming. He had thought that it would deliver him from a strange and hostile world, but now it was simply a continuation of his new experiences, of something he had already conquered and made his own.
Quoted on August 2, 2021