Close encounters with children's writers, part 6

This year marks the centenary of Tove Jansson, the author of the Moomin books. It will be celebrated worldwide, I believe, with new books, conferences, festivals and exhibitions. I have contributed to the academic bit with an edited special issue of a journal, to be published in summer, just in time for the actual hundredth birthday. But I'd better hurry with my personal reminiscences before the web is drowned in Tove Jansson stuff and nobody has energy to read more.

As I have mentioned many times, I am not particularly interested in flesh-and-blood authors, and I have seldom actively tried to meet them unless I had a good reason (such as an interview). Since Tove Jansson lived in Helsinki I couldn't meet her at publisher receptions or the Children’s Book Institute events, where I met many Swedish authors. But it so happened that Staffan wrote a musical together with Vivica Bandler, a famous theatre director and producer, once upon a time Tove Jansson's partner and subsequently a good friend. We were invited to Vivica's birthday party in Helsinki, featuring the cream of Finland's culture, which made me feel very special indeed. It was a relatively small private party, following a huge celebration at the theatre, so inevitably everybody was introduced to everybody else, and when I was introduced to Tove Jansson and explained that I had read her books in Moscow, she clapped her hands and kissed me. She was like that.

About a year later, my colleague Boel Westin defended her doctoral thesis on Tove Jansson, and the study object was the guest of honour. It was a horrible winter day, with sleet and wind, and after the defence and the sparkling I offered to take the defendant and the object home in my car. For some inexplicable reason, I thought that Tove was staying with Boel and drove to her house, opening the back door for Tove and her partner Tuulikki. Tove looked at me with horror: “Are we to go on foot from here?” I realised I'd made a blunder and took them to their hotel. In the evening, at the banquet, I asked Tove to sign three books for my children.

Tove Jansson's eightieth birthday was celebrated loudly in Finland, with a big international conference in Tampere, the location of the Finnish children's books institute. The object of research was there, sitting literally on a throne, crowned with a wreath of flowers. People queued as if in front of royalty, invited one by one to approach, speak and be ushered away. I looked at this and told myself: I have met this wonderful person privately, she has sat in the back seat of my car. Do I really need to stand in line to say some pointless words? And I didn't.

Bo Carpelan in memoriam

For this occasion I am posting in Swedish. This is what I wrote about Bo Carpelan, the wonderful Finno-Swedish poet and children's book writer, in Finlands svenska litteraturhistoria (2000).

Bo Carpelan (f. 1926) vågar sig på något som få barnboksförfattare genom tiderna har vågat: lyrisk prosa för barn. Det finns förutfattade meningar om att barn inte tycker om naturskildringar och gärna hoppar över dem när de läser. Carpelan tar utmaningen och bygger sina barnromaner kring naturbeskrivningar, med samma sofistikerade symbolik och bildspråk som är kännetecknande för hans vuxenlyrik. Carpelans barnböcker påminner om Tove Janssons i sin starka nostalgiska känsla, idealiseringen av barndomen, sommaren, familjen, vänskapen. Kontrasten mellan den idylliska naturen och den grymma storstaden är ett återkommande tema i all världens barnlitteratur; hos Carpelan tillkommer, kanske på det undermedvetna planet, parallellen mellan det finlandssvenska (en sommarö i skärgården) och finska (storstaden, Helsingfors). Ö-symboliken i Anders på ön (1959) och Bågen (1968) understryker än en gång den självisolering som den finlandssvenska litteraturen har valt som överlevnadsstrategi, och staden står som kontrast, även i själva titeln, Anders i stan (1962). Men också i den andra sviten, Bågen och Paradiset (1973), finns samma motsättning. Familjebanden är lika viktiga hos Carpelan som hos Tove Jansson, och utöver föräldrarna finns det flera andra snälla och förstående vuxna, som både uppskattar och uppmuntrar barnens fantasi. Samtidigt finns det flera gemensamma drag med en del rikssvenska barnboksförfattare, framför allt Maria Gripe och Gunnel Linde, som porträtterar annorlunda, ensamma, vilsegångna barn och ungdomar. Den introspektiva berättartekniken i Anders-böckerna och jag-berättaren i Johan och Marvin-böckerna understryker att världen presenteras helt och hållet genom ett barns ögon, den traditionella allvetande och didaktiska barnboksberättaren har dragit sig tillbaka. Den utvecklingsstörde Marvin kan uppfattas som ytterligare en av den samhällsrealistiska barnlitteraturens gestalter ”med problem”, men samtidigt är han också en sinnebild för utanförskap, isolering och ensamhet.

Carpelans ganska sparsamma produktion för barn kulminerar i Julius Blom ett huvud för sig (1982) där pojken inte enbart är en udda drömmare som tycker om natur och poesi, utan är själv en diktare. Julius är besläktad med Maria Gripes inåtvända barn, särskilt Elvis Karlsson. Carpelan tillåter sin huvudperson att vara avvikande utan att behöva be om ursäkt eller bestraffas, vilket annars är det vanliga i barnböcker. Om Elvis-böckerna lämnar en med en känsla av uppgivenhet är Carpelans bok ljus och hoppfull.

Carpelans status som både barnboksförfattare och vuxenförfattare är annorlunda än för Tove Jansson eller Irmelin Sandman Lilius. Hans båda författarskap löper parallellt och går in i varandra på många sätt: tematiskt, språkligt och berättartekniskt. Barnromanerna kan också betraktas som barndomsskildringar för vuxna, inte minst Bågen och Paradiset, där gränsen mellan ungdomsbok och vuxenbok är ytterst suddig. Kanske är denna dubbelhet i tilltalet ytterligare ett viktigt kännetecken för den finlandssvenska barnlitteraturen, där ”stora” författare även känner ansvar för den unga publiken.

Me and my paddy

I have finally succumbed and got an iPad. I will mostly use it for lectures, meetings and conferences: reading from screen rather than print out (a self-deceit of being green). I have been doing it for a long time noe with a laptop, but coming to a meeting with  laptop is almost like bringing a runic stone. Anyway, I am a happy owner of a paddy, and just as with my recent smartphone I am discovering things that I didn't know I wanted. I don't like calendar on the phone because it is too small and it takes me ages to type in a simple note, but I can imagine that next year will be the first since I was fifteen that I won't get a printed diary. I have a couple of months to discover whether paddy covers my needs.

One thing I did know I wanted was testing picturebook apps that one of my students has been studying for her thesis ever since the first iPad was launched. I remember her coming to supervision almost in tears saying: What shall I do? This changes everything. I can just as well throw away my thesis. To which the clever supervisor said: On the contrary, seize the day! Be the first to investigare picturebook apps in your thesis. Which she did.

The first picturebook app, that came free with the first iPad, was Dr Seuss' The Cat in the Hat. What my student and I agreed at once was that the app destroys the paratexts: cover, endpapers, title page - those element of the picturebook that sometimes are essential (if you want to know more, read my book How Picturebooks Work). What we tried to figure out was whether apps add something new or at least compensate fior what they have lost. The Cat in the Hat has been updated since then (one feature you can't do with a printed book, for better and for worse: you'll have to buy a new printed edition, while an app update writes over the previous version. No way you can compare covers). It is a good way to start a discussion of apps as compared with printed books. I put it on my syllabus before I got my paddy. But I will need more examples for this particular class.

I then bought Oliver Jeffers' The Heart and the Bottle, made by a celebrated picturebook author specifically as app. I suppose that you need to think slightly differently if you are doing an app from scratch, rather than transferring an existing picturebook into an app. If you are a clever picturebook creator you will think about how to make the most of the medium. I will need to play with it a bit more, but it is interesting, and it works. 

The third app I got was one of my favourite picturebooks, What Happened Then, by Tove Jansson. It's a wonderful book with cut-outs and lots of surprises. It is a interactive book, long before interactivity was associated with digital media. It is a sophisticated book. The app has lost it all and offers nothing instead. You tap and something pops up. Then it hides. You tap again, it pops up again. You shake, and leaves fall. Then they rise again. This app is a good argument for those against apps. It's merely a gimmick. Too bad. Too bad because parents will buy it for their kids who will never discover the real book. But that's what we have been saying about tevevision, movies and glossy Disney booklets of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame with a happy ending.

Further reflections on getting published

My very first publication was a book review. Book reviews can be very helpful at the beginning of your academic career. I reviewed for a weird semi-academic journal that only had reviews of foreign books, and I was their Scandinavian reviewer. That's how I learned to read Norwegian and Danish, that I have actually never studied. The journal was bi-monthly, and I contributed to every issue, only it was against the rules to have more than one review in the same issue so all reviewers had lots of pseudonyms. I would, for instance, use my father's or my grandfather's first names as pseudonyms. Once a year, there was a special issue on children's literature, and I always reviewed several books for those. I reviewed Tove Jansson's Moominvalley in November when it first came out. Now mind, this was behind the Iron Curtain, and reviewing was the only way for me to get hold of books. And of course I wasn't allowed to keep them, they went to the library.

Occasionally, I reviewed something for the journal on children's literature. I am quite proud of having reviewed the first Russian translation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Some years after I had come to Sweden, a new journal in children's literature started, Opsis Kalopsis, and I happened to sit next to the editor-in-chief at a reception, just as she was looking for reviewers. I wrote for this journal for many years (and was allowed to keep books). I mostly specialised in fantasy and had “my” authors, including Lloyd Alexander, Diana Wynne Jones and Philip Pullman. Many reviews fed into my academic writing.

For a while I reviewed books for the cultural journal of the Swedish church. I did it because these were not children's books, and I thought it might be useful to add to my cv. I reviewed such authors as Harold Bloom and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I have written reviews for Scandinavica, and occasional reviews here and there. I don't review on a regular basis any more, but every now and I am asked to review a professional publication. I only do it if I am really interested, which I most often am (I guess that why they ask me).

Looking back, I think that reviewing was an extremely helpful writing practice. Staying within word count and keeping deadlines is always good training. Following an author for several years was stimulating and resulted in author portraits and other publications. And in many cases, the journals I reviewed for would eventually take my own article.

Formal Hall

Most of us have a vague idea of the British academic traditions: gowns, processions etc. It is all, however, very abstract until you participate in it. I had no idea that some colleges in Cambridge still have formal dinners once a week or more. I like it! I am very much for traditions, and there are almost none in Sweden. We do not even have gowns. I am for traditions because there are too few occasions for celebration in our hectic life, so every occasion should be happily grabbed at. I have learned this wisdom from the Moomin characters in the wondeful books by Tove Jansson. They never missed a chance for a feast.

I was invited to Formal Hall at Homerton College as Morag's personal guest, which is a great honour. I was worried about dress code, but Morag told me that any decent clothes would do. You don't want to be overdressed either. Formal Hall begins with people gathering at Combination Room. Now that I will soon be part of this community I must pay attention to the right names for everything. Not Common Room, not Congregation Room. Combination Room. I didn't pay attention then. In Combination Room you get your preprandials. "Preprandial" is a word you use when you want to impress native speakers. It is not exactly one of the thousand most common words in the English language. Ever since I learned it I never miss a chance to show off. There is, however, a risk that your native conversation partner won't know it. For preprandial you get sherry, which, my journalist husband claims, is the most academic beverage in the world.

After half an hour a gong announces that dinner is served. A train of academics, at least half in gowns, moves toward the Hall. I was awed. Yes, I have seen it in movies, but this was IRL. Together with other teachers I was placed on a podium while students sat at long tables below. Harry Potter again. Grace was said in Latin. I was now more thrilled than awed. This alone was worth the painful procedure of applying for the job. (Yes, I know that I have a tendency to become soppy).

When we got back to Combination Room for coffee, fire alarm sounded. We were not in the Middle Ages after all.

Pursuing hobbies

For restoration of my doll house I need, among other things, lolly sticks. They are very practical for many purposes. I brought an ample supply from a hobby shop the old country, but I ran out of them when I decided to build herringbone floors for the living room. Someone on my electronic discussion group had made a wooden-strip floor (not herringbone parquet though), and I could not resist the challenge. It’s a minuscule job of course, like building a jigsaw puzzle of ten thousand pieces, but it is highly relaxing. And I am not in a hurry. I don’t have to meet a deadline for a fair; on the contrary, the point is to prolong the process as much as possible. A doll house can never be perfect and finished. A character in Tove Jansson’s Moomin books who has managed to collect all the stamps in the world is frustrated because he has become an owner rather than a collector, and it is not the same pleasure.

The yellow pages for Cambridge carry some arts and crafts shops, but nowhere did they have lolly sticks. I have tried online doll-house and craft-supplies stores too. I am positively sure that English miniature devotees use lolly sticks just as much as the Swedish; apparently I have turned to wrong shops. At long last I found a place called Hobby Stores in a nearby village. This was promising, and we went there. The window display was an immediate disappointment: plane and train model kits. They didn’t have lolly sticks, but they did have thin long strips in much softer wood, that turned out to be significantly easier to cut. I have now been to this shop three times and hope to get discounts soon.

The herringbone floor is ready. I must think of another long-term project. Decorate the house outward with handmade bricks perhaps.

The herringbone floor is not fitted in yet since it needs a coat of varnish.

Desert island picturebooks

A new challenge from Philip Nel, and the first element of the challenge is spelling. (For the unitiated, it is a neverending battle).

Like Philip, I know "Top ten" etc is highly subjective; in fact, I am involved in a research project on exactly this matter, but that's another story. I think I must also make a difference between books that I cannot live without (desert island books) and books that I would recommend to a novice. I can live without Peter Rabbit, but I wouldn't omit it from a reading list.

Actually, I am not sure I would take picturebooks to a desert island. They are too short. I'd take ten books of 800 pages each. (A friend once asked, when we were playing this game, whether Collected Works of Shakespeare counted as one book).

However, if I were to choose ten indispensible picturbooks (in fact, I did once choose ten indispensible picturebooks, in my book on picturebooks, but it was ten years ago, and books ahv changed and I have changed), there wouldn't be a single common denominator with Philip's books - so that we can swim from island to island and exchange, making it twenty between ourselves.

Here we go.

1. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak. The picturebook. Predictable, I know, but I cannot imagine how you can talk about picturebooks without starting there. Every time I re-read it, I find something new. Every time I approach it with a new tool, it just opens into new dimensions. In other words, if I am only allowed one picturebook on my island, that's it.

2. The Tunnel, Anthony Browne. Everything you want from a picturebook is there: simple story and complex narrative, clever and emotional, all kinds of complex relationships, incredibly rich imagery, irony and self-irony. Profound book.

3. Pancakes for Findus, Sven Nordqvist. It's my favourite Findus and Pettson book, but all of them are equally brilliant. Witty, clever, rich in details, warm, but never losing the complexity of relationships.

4. Little Blue and Little Yellow, Leo Lionni. Amazing what you can do with characters who do not even have faces.

5, Granpa, John Burningham. Piercing story in which words stop when they no longer can express the feelings.

6. The Red Tree, Shaun Tan. Could be The Lost Thing too, but The Red Tree is deeper in meaning, emotional appeal and visual language.

7. Who will comfort Toffle? Tove Jansson. Again, a hard choice between her books, but this is my favourite. Brilliant visual language, and such a magnificent story.

8. Me and my Cat, Satoshi Kitamura. Just to be original - everybody else will choose Lily Takes a Walk. Excellent illustration of how words and images work together.

9. Visit of Little Death, Kitty Crowther. In tough competition, the best picturebook about death. Even better than Granpa.

10. OK, I give in. The Cat in the Hat. Loved it long before I knew what a picturebook was.

Welcome to my island.

And if you want to know more about my favourite books, visit my bookshelf.

Someone to remember

I am reading a biography of a person whom I admire and whom I have had the privilege of knowing. Many, many years ago in my previous life, Staffan and I were interpreting at a meeting between Russian and Nordic theatre people. We were doing it as a favour to colleagues, without payment, and as anyone who has ever interpreted knows, it is easier to interpet from your mother tongue to a foreign language, so I was interpreting from Russian into Swedish, and Staffan from Swedish into Russian. After a while, a formidable woman in her sixties interrupted quite rudely: "Why don't you do it the other way round?" I was deeply offended, and Staffan phoned the culprit the day after and gave her third degree. This was how we first met the legendary Vivica Bandler. The result of the encounter was that Staffan and Vivica wrote a musical together. I was rather jealous of Vivica at the time because I didn't see much of Staffan for weeks, and he seemed to be having fun. I was consulted about a couple of Russian details that Vivica dismissed as theatrically insignificant.

We were both invited to Vivica's seventieth birthday in Helsinki, which was a parade of cultural celebrities. It started with drinks in the theatre where she had been director and producer, continuied with a splendid dinner in her magnificent mansion, and when Staffan and I, around 2 am, prepared to leave, Vivica said: "So early? We are going back to the theatre for nibbles!"

A couple of years later Vivica called me and asked whether I would like to translate a play. As her biographer points out - a well-known fact to all who have ever met her - "nobody could say no to her on the phone". She was organising a Finnish theatre festival in Moscow, and she wanted one play to be done in Russian, with two actors of Russian ancestry. The play guested Stockholm, and Vivica took me to see it twice before I started the translation. It was a challenge, because the actors' Russian was nursery talk, while the play used modern, colloquial, not to say explicit idiom which they found totally alien.

 We flew to Moscow, me joining them in Helsinki. Nobody met us when we emerged through passport control and customs. Vivica was angry. In fact she was furious. Vivica furious was a sight. An hour later, she was paged. Our hosts were waiting for her in the VIP room. I didn't see much of her during the festival week because she was a Very Important Guest and I was just a translator (as well as a prompter, since the actors kept losing their swearwords). Yet it was fun to be part of her entourage. At one point, she was asked whether she had been to Russia before. "Yes, she said, in 1943". The hosts were awed. "During the war?" "Yes, Vivica confirmed, when little Finland tried to invade the Soviet Union". This was Vivica's typical sarcasm, possibly lost on the hosts. She had served in women's auxilliary forces at the front.  

Regrettably, after that we lost touch and only met occasionally. It was with deep sorrow Staffan and I read about her death in 2004. The biography I am reading brings back many details I have heard and some that I have witnessed about this truly remarkable person.

If you wonder why you would bother about a stranger, many people know her well as Vifslan (Bob in English) in Tove Jansson's Moomin books.

A collector's joys

I have never been a real collector. I collected poststamps when I was a child. I collected something as trivial as animals and plants, but I didn't like it when adults gave me pretty sets of stamps from a bookstore. The whole point of collecting was to seek, find, get hold of. Not own. (Tove Jansson has a wonderful passage on this). What I really regret is that I didn't listen to my mother who, when I was seven or so, suggested that I should collect musicians' autographs. Given the musical circles I grew up in, it would have been a formidable collection. Probably worth a fortune by now.

I collect Alice in Wonderland in different translations and with different illustrations (donations welcome). But I don't collect sytematically, and I would never pay fancy prices for a rare edition.

Maybe I am just not a natural collector.

For a while, I collected coffee grinders. I had perhaps two dozen. But there aren't that many varieties of coffee grinders, so I was soon satisfied - but also dissatisfied by owning, not collecting. Besides, you cannot do much with coffee grinders except put them on a shelf to gather dust. So when I gave away all coffee grinders I decided to collect something one could actually use.

I collect a very special Swedish china from the famous Rörstrand china factory. The set called Gröna Anna, Green Anna, was first produced in 1898, and some of the old pieces are still in circulation. You can tell by the stamps. The set was also produced between 1966 and 2002, but in a slightly different design.

I started by buying a set of plates in a thrift shop, but all the rest I get from eBay. For quite a long time I studied the market, to see what was available and what the reasonable prices were. Sometimes you get incredible bargains in eBay. And it's amazing how much you learn just by discovering the names and uses of various china pieces. Do you know what a cabaret is? Don't look it up on the web, it's not there. But a good old dictionary will tell you.

By now I have a full set of everyday pieces: plates, soup plates, side plates, tea cups, coffee cups, mugs, egg cups, a milk jug, a cream jug, a sugar bowl, dishes, bowls. But I also have quite a few of the older things, and here the collector's instinct comes in. For some reason, certain pieces are very rare. Like the said cabaret - I've only seen it once in two years, and there is a limit to how much I am prepared to pay. But how exciting! Another piece that I've only seen twice is an extremely sweet hexagonal jug. Now, after two years, I finally got one. I paid slightly more than I had intended, because I knew they were so rare. The problem is, Swedish eBay normally doesn't ship overseas, so I use Julia's address, much to her irritation. This time the seller called to say she'd discovered some cracks in the jug and would ship it free if I still wanted it. Then she called again to say that she'd discovered more defects and would give it away if I just paid the postage. So now I have this very old, very rare, very cracked and pretty jug for almost nothing. That's the true collectors delight. My next coveted object is a saladier.

Annual report 2013

Looking back at the past year and especially comparing it with some previous years, I find it rather uneventful. The highlight was Staffan's seventieth birthday and the wonderful surprise party when twelve out of twenty of the immediate family arrived just in time for lunch, without Staffan having the slighest idea. I enjoyed it. He had to admit that he did too.

Two children turned forty this year. It's weird. No new grandchildren. Errrm... actually, a new bonus grandchild. Red-haired too. And Kory has moved to Sweden and is repeating my struggle for acceptance. She has just been offered a good job.

I spent a good part of the year working hard, first finishing a book, then revising another book (and now revising the first book). I also wrote a number of articles and chapters that I had promised to write long before, hoping that something would come in between (but it never does). Several articles and chapters have been published – see full info on my academia page.

I have been good and said no to many things. Sadly, I even had to cancel a few things, including a trip to Canada with all expenses paid. But I attended a conference in Stockholm and a symposium in Chichester; Morag read my paper at a conference in Venice, and I did two virtual lectures. I have guest edited a special issue of a journal on Tove Jansson. I have hosted two symposia. I examined two PhD theses, one in Norway and one in Exeter. I have written gazillions of recommendation letters and promotion reviews. All colleagues I reviewed got their promotions.

I have been elected Fellow of the English Association. I can put FEA on my business card. 

Some doctoral students have successfully completed their theses, and all of them have got excellent jobs. I have four new PhD students this year, and it seems that at least four are coming next year. We are growing. We are gaining reputation.

I didn't travel much this year, which was a clever decision. I was in Stockholm twice, and obviously I had to go to Norway and Exeter for examination and to Chichester to give a paper, but apart from that, I only went to Norfolk twice, both time for pure recreation. I should do more of that.

Apart from the family invasion in August, we didn't have many visitors this year. A grandchild stayed a few days because her parents allowed her to go to London for a concert on condition that she would stay with Granny. My faithful childhood friend came for a week – that's when we went to Norfolk. And a very good old friend and colleague from Stockholm came for a few days, deciding on the spot. I said, casually: “When are you coming to visit me?”, and ten minutes later she got back with the flight number. This is why I like my friends. We also had a visit from Sweden's most eminent UFO-logist, and I wish I had recorded our conversations that night.

I have read some good books, but I have already done a separate post on them. I have only seen one play, and it was hilarious. I have seen several good movies. Amour made the strongest impression.

We haven't done any house improvements, but I have worked a lot in the garden, clearing our little ditch that I call a brook. I have planted one new rose and made a new flower border. The strawberries were all eaten by deer, but we had two magnificent harvests of raspberries.

I haven't bought any new clothes or shoes this year.

I have made some fantastic dollhouses and room boxes.Visit my dollhouse blog.

I have started exercising again, and my coach makes me work hard. I haven't been very good recently with my power walks, but I have a goal and must reach it because I am training for a purpose. But it is too early to talk about it.

This is the first time in thirty-two years of our marriage that we'll have a child-free Christmas. 

Books for the season

This time of year newspapers and websites abound in lists of books to give children for Christmas. I resent the idea that children – or grown-ups for that matter – should only be encouraged to read during holidays, but at least it makes children's literature slightly more visible. I join the chorus with my selection of favourites.

For humour lovers: Five Children and It, by Edith Nesbit

For romance lovers: Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson

For adventure lovers: Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson

For fantasy lovers: The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, by Lloyd Alexander

For advanced fantasy lovers: Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones

For Alice in Wonderland lovers: Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

For language lovers: The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

For mystery lovers: The Solitaire Mystery, by Jostein Gaarder

For horror lovers: The Shadow, by Hans Christian Andersen

For art lovers: Willy's Pictures, by Anthony Browne

For cat lovers: Me and my Cat, by Satoshi Kitamura

For hippo lovers: Veronica, by Roger Duvoisin

For Shakespeare lovers: Aldabra, or The Tortoise who Loved Shakespeare, by Silvana Gandolfi

For toy lovers: The Mouse and His Child, by Russell Hoban

For dolls' house lovers: The Mennyms, by Sylvia Waugh

For justice lovers: The Book of Everything, by Guus Kuijer