This is an all-time favorite, and reading the final story aloud is a Yuletide tradition. My daughter and I shared the whole volume as a read-aloud in our latest re-read, savoring it slowly, one story at a time, every few days. Even so, it was over too soon, and now we will have to re-read the entire Moomin series together. Every time I read Tove Jansson, I treasure familiar moments, but other moments pop out that I hadn't savored enough before, and so I'm surprised and delighted anew. Recently we branched out to read Jansson's writing for adults, not having realized before that she had written anything non-Moomin, so now we have a whole pile of new favorites, but it's her ability to weave wisdom for all ages into light and fanciful children's books that puts Jansson forever on a top shelf, alongside Milne, Kipling, Grahame, and Lindgren.