Growing up I was voracious reader of adventure novels and comics; 20,000 Leagues Underneath the Sea, Lord of the Rings, The Count of Monte Cristo, the Three Musketeers, Tintin, Asterix, Blueberry, you name it I read it.  My own novel, Jörgits and the End of Winter bares a strong resemblance to the classic adventure novel; it’s about exploring the unknown, uncovering hidden plots, fighting prehistoric monsters, and enduring friendships tested by conflicts larger than ourselves.

In the Jörgits that conflict is global warming. There’s an evil villain too, Augustus Kauhanen the III, but he’s not the cause of the main conflict, he’s just an actor in it. Kauhanen represents the darker side of human nature, our relentless appetite for technological progress and perfection. With global warming the real villains is actually hard to pinpoint. Who can we blame? Is it a cabal of rich industrialists(Kauhanen and his Searchers), or our own desire for the newest iPhone?

Through the Jörgits I aim to introduce children to the complexity of the global warming. We start in Finland, my home country, in the middle of winter, when the temperatures are -20 and day light last but a few hours. Though Finns may hate winter at times, they also love it for all the things it affords us: hot coco, sledding, cross country skiing, and hours time spent together in warm conversations in front of a fire. What happens if we take away the snow that brings light but keep the time shrouded in darkness constant? 

To keep the story from being didactic, the global warming often recedes into the background, like Eye of Sauron, and instead we focus upon the Jörgits and how they perceive our strange world. Through their eyes we discovers how beautiful and mysterious it really is. My starting point in writing the Jörgits was the following, if our children don’t value nature, will they really see a need to save it?

In this first, novel much of the adventure takes place underwater. Is there a realm on Earth that still holds more mysteries than the deep blue? Surely not. With the Jörgits, I have spent a lot of loving care on the underwater illustrations and the strange things we encounter there: kelp forests, crabs, giant rock formations, luminescent jellyfish + a giant Squid named Alfons. What more could you ask for?