‘The Real and the Child-like: Generation and Philosophy in Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book’

Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book presents a deft, sensitive and thought provoking relationship between a grandmother and her grandchild. My reading perceives two separate philosophical approaches which are brought together by relationship, circumstance and a mutual questing for understandings of life. Each protagonist is situated according to age and differing experience; each comes together in a mutual formulation of a shared philosophical view. The grandchild is affected and shaped by her grandmother’s approach, personality and oblique didacticism. In turn the grandmother demonstrates the influences of her young charge. The chapter is a discussion of the above by close reference to the text.