This “Letters from Tove” was written in 1987. Veera Gyllenborg in Sweden had a burning question and Tove Jansson promptly answered on a Unicef postcard.
We have written briefly about the Unicef illustration by Tove on the blog earlier.
You can find the transcript and Veera’s story about the letter below. We thank her for sharing her letter with us.
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Dated April 1987
Hi Veera,
Thank you for your letter and greetings to the Groke, it it probably the first time she got a poem of her own!
Sure, it was fun to sleep on a sleeping shelf, a little like sitting in a tree and looking at people below, you sort of felt superior. And to finally have a place you could call your own!
Wishing you a nice spring – a big hug – Tove
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Veera’s recollection of the letter in her own words:
I was an early Tove-fan and during Christmas in 1986 I got a book called
“Möte med Tove Jansson / Meeting Tove Jansson” (by Tordis Örjasäter), where Tove talked about how she as a child had slept on a sleeping shelf that her father had crafted high on a wall in the art studio.
I wrote to Tove in April 1987 when I was nine years old. It was with great hesitation that I wrote to her, since I had read that Tove spent a great deal of time answering the letters she got, taking up a lot of her personal time.
Finally I wrote to her as I was very curious about what it was like to sleep on a sleeping shelf. And Tove answered.
My letter from Tove is one of my most precious items, and perhaps it shows from the numerous thumbtack marks on the postcard where I pinned it to my wall.
Veera Gyllenborg