Freedom is the Best Thing (A Story of Tove Jansson)

From the award-winning author Matthew Burgess and the Italian illustrator Serena Mabilia, this biography of Moomin creator Tove Jansson is also a love-letter to a truly free and expressive human being

This picture book biography of Tove Jansson, with ample back matter for reference, gives readers the scope of Jansson’s life, from childhood to her departure from her longtime summer home on her favorite island as an older woman. As a picture book for young readers, there is ample focus on her childhood and youth and a beautiful thematic emphasis on “freedom,” a word Jansson used herself from a young age. Indeed, the title of the book––Freedom is the Best Thing––comes from words she scrawled on a wall like graffiti in her youth, expressing even at that young age a value that would remain most dear to her throughout her life. In these pages, Jansson discovers her own voice, her life’s calling, and her life partner, and all the while, the soul of her childhood and passion for being free remain alive within her.