Moomin Book Three: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip

The third collection of Moomintroll family comic strips contains five stories. Although they proceed in tripartitioned rectangles (stacked four on a page), reflecting their original newspaper format, their narrative flow doesn’t stutter a bit. It’s as if they were conceived as wholes, despite their story lines’ essential capriciousness. In them, the family faces flood, Martians, lighthouse-keeping, and club life (clubs were big in the newly leisured 1950s, the strip’s era, to which it otherwise gives scant notice), and Moomin, the young male character, falls briefly for a siren. They’re keenly delightful, like Wind in the Willows for adults, especially those who aren’t too adult. --Ray Olson from Book List.