It was soundly built and a very good house. The house rocked slightly but didn’t lose its foothold. They had no more than got their tails inside the door when the flood wave came crashing through the Moomin Valley and drenched everything in darkness. ‘I suppose we’d better go into the drawing-room now,’ said Moominmamma. In the fair night they could see something enormous rise high over the tree-tops of the forest, like a great wall that grew and grew with a white and foaming crest. It came rolling up from across the sea, first low and mumbling, then growing stronger and stronger. It was at that moment they heard the great rumble. Is the flood going to take them all to heaven?

‘Fiddlesticks,’ said Moominmamma genially and whisked away another speck of soot from her snout. ‘Everybody’s burning up!’ shouted Little My happily, ‘And everybody’s houses and gardens and playthings and little sisters and their playthings!’ And now, after all these years, exactly when I’ve finished my washing, it has to sneeze once again and blacken all the things I hang out.’ It’s always kept quiet and good ever since I married. ‘Yes, it’s a mountain not so very far from here, and all of a sudden it’s begun spitting fire and smoke over the whole valley,’ explained Moominmamma. ‘Volcano?’ asked Little My, and thrust an interested head out of the wool. ‘So very annoying, this volcano,’ she remarked. The Moomin family wild adventures starting with a volcano and a flood which separates them - for a while

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson