Materials from Europe
In the turbulent world of the Mediterranean Bronze Age, Hylas, a lowly twelve-year-old goatherd, thief, and outsider, journeys from the Greek mountains to Crete and Egypt, making allies with animals, battling tyranny, and withstanding the elemental powers of the gods of land and sea.
Johnny’s daddy has smooth cheeks, an apple in his throat and sounds like a mom when he sings in the bath. At other times a cactus grows out of his chin and his breath smells like cauliflower. At times he has warm hands and his fingers taste like applesauce. Other times his hands are cold and flash like lightning, and he becomes a thunder-daddy. When this happens Johnny wants to find a new daddy, but he eventually realizes that thunder-daddies don’t last forever. And that there’s nothing like the comfort that comes from those we love.Klaas Verplancke’s story, with its humorous, energetic and imaginative illustrations, will strike a chord with many young children and parents as they discover that love sometimes means setting limits, and that people do get angry, but that where there is love, it doesn’t last.
Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 4.
Moomintroll encounters a mouth-organist, a moth collector, and a lovely maiden, and discovers the danger of a threatening comet when he takes a journey to seek advice from the Professor.
A Moomintroll is small and shy and fat, and has a Moominpappa and a Moominmamma. Moomins live in the forests of Finland. One day Moominpappa is feeling at a loss. He has no idea what to do with himself because it seems everything has already been done. So he takes his family off to start a new life in a lighthouse on a tiny, rocky island far out to sea. It’s rather quiet and lonely at first, but as they begin to explore their unusual surroundings the Moomins discover some funny and surprising new things about themselves.
It is spring in the valley and the Moomins are ready for adventure! Moomintroll and his friends Snufkin and Sniff find the Hobgoblinrs”s top hat, all shiny and new and just waiting to be taken home. They soon realize that his is no ordinary hat; it can turn anything’or anyone’into something else!
When Moomintroll wakes up in January, he finds that winter has changed all his favorite places in the Valley.
Created in 1945, yet published in this country for the very first time, The Moomins and the Great Flood offers an extraordinary glimpse into the creativity and imagination that launched the Moomin books. Moominmamma and young Moomintroll search for the long lost Moominpappa through forest and flood, meeting a little creature (an early Sniff) and the elegantly strange Tulippa along the way. Tove Jansson illustrates her first ever Moomin adventure with stunning sepia watercolour and delightful pen and ink drawings.
In these nine delightfully funny stories, readers will discover how the Moomin family spend their first Christmas out of hibernation, how they save young Ninny from permanent invisibility, and what happens when Moomintroll catches the last dragon in the world.
When a flood crashes through the valley, the Moomins move into a theater as it floats by, and they put on a play to find their lost relatives.
Little Bear, all grown up, finds himself lost in a noisy, busy city where he happens to bump into someone with golden hair who remembers exactly how he likes his porridge.