For bedtime stories now, we are reading Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson. Sylvia is really loving it, which does my heart good as the Moomin books are some of my favorites. (Previously we have read together chapters here and there from a few of the books, but this is the first one we are taking on as a complete story.) Tonight while we were reading Chapter IV, we came across one of my favorite moments involving the small animal Sniff, immediately after he escapes from the dragon whose garnets he was trying to steal: Sniff was sobbing on the ground."It's all over now," said Snufkin. "Don't cry anymore, Sniff." "The garnets," Sniff moaned. "I didn't get a single one." Snufkin sat down beside him and said kindly, "I know. But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase." "The garnets would have gone in the rucksack," said Sniff miserably. "You don't need hands for that. It's not the same thing at all just looking at them. I want to touch them and know they're mine." This exchange is kind of a set piece in children's stories, I can't give an example but you see it quite a bit. But I think nowhere else is it done as neatly and touchingly. It reads to my ear as if Jansson knows it is a set piece and is playing with it a bit, but she is also sincerely getting her point across. What Jansson does particularly well (and what I think authors who present this exchange often fail in) is show how miserable Sniff is about not having gotten the garnets. His line, "the garnets would have gone in the rucksack -- you don't need hands for that", is just perfect. He's heard the line Snufkin is passing him before, and he's not buying it.
posted evening of Tuesday, August 16th, 2005
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