The Summer Book The Summer Book The Summer Book (in the original Swedish Sommarboken) is a book written by Finnish author Tove Jansson in 1972. An elderly woman and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia spend a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland exploring, talking about life, nature, everything but their feelings about Sophia's mother's death and their love for one another. The novelist Ali Smith, reviewing the book in "The Guardian", wrote that Jansson was better known for her Moomin books than for her novels, and that with her worldwide fame, she knew the virtues of withdrawal. In Smith's
Jansson Jansson Jansson is a Swedish patronymic surname, meaning "son of Jan", derived from Johannes, a cognate of John. There are alternate Belgian, German, Dutch, Danish, Latvian and Norwegian spellings. Jansson is rare as a given name. As of 2014, 86.2% of all known bearers of the surname "Jansson" were residents of Sweden, 5.1% of Finland, 2.9% of the United States and 1.7% of Norway. In Sweden, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:199) in the following counties: In Finland, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:1,893) in the following regions: Jansson, a