Tatu and Patu in Helsinki // Tatu ja Patu Helsingissä

2012, Otava

By Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen

Now available for purchase in Finland! Akateeminen Suomalainen

Get ready for another rollicking ride with the boys from Oddsville, this time through the 2012 World Design Capital!



See also:

Tatu and Patu’s This is Finland (Published)

Tatu and Patu’s Adventures in Outer Space (Sample)

Tatu and Patu as Superheroes! (Sample)

Tatu and Patu’s Oddball Bedtime Book (Sample)

Tatu and Patu’s Amazing Alphabet (Sample)

Tatu and Patu’s Adventures in Outer Space // Tatun ja Patun Avaruusseikkailu

Tatu and Patu's Adventures in Outer Space

Otava 2011

by Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen

From the 2011 Otava Foreign Rights Guide:

A universally weird intergalactic adventure that thrusts forward at hyperspeed and plunges readers into orbits of laughter!

The wildly fast-paced and utterly wacky series of adventures continues – this time, the brothers from Oddsville have a go at sci-fi. Tatu and Patu take off on an adventure across the universe – their mission is to defend galactic peace and perform other important feats of derring-do.

Tatu and Patu build their own spaceship for the trip. It’s not long before the interstellar adventure shuttle I.T.S.  Bananas shoots up into the sky. Space cadet A.T.L. Antic and star pilot Styrox Box, also known as Mr. Cool, head towards the furthest reaches of the universe. As the boys are checking whether there is air in the rings of Saturn, something bright, fast, and incredibly huge crashes into them. The wings of their spaceship catch on fire and they just barely escape to the safety of the Star Union mother ship.

There, they encounter not only their greatly admired Ro-He, commander of the Star Union, but also an enormous problem: a state of emergency has been announced throughout the entire universe, because an immense, unknown destructive force is moving through the solar systems. Planets have disappeared, and all the orbits are completely out of whack.

With the help of Antic and Box and the little girl Ring-Da, the Star Union resolves its urgent problem, but they need a healthy dose of Tatu and Patu’s ingenuity and courage as well as little Ring-Da’s insights and a gigantic finger before peace is restored to the universe.

Tatu and Patu’s Adventures in Outer Space is the second book in the series Tatu and Patu’s Adventures. Tatu and Patu: Superheroes! kicked off the series to a fantastic reception, sparking comments such as: “Once more, Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen demonstrate a fine understanding of what works on little boys and girls – and older ones, too.” – kaks’plus

A sample translation in English is available.

See also:

Tatu and Patu’s This is Finland

Tatu and Patu in Helsinki

Tatu and Patu as Superheroes!

Tatu and Patu’s Oddball Bedtime Book

Tatu and Patu’s Amazing Alphabet

Oddball Bedtime Book / Tatun ja Patun Outo unikirja

Otava, 2008

By Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen

From the Otava Rights Catalog:

An indispensable book for anyone who sleeps! This book has everything, from instructions for choosing a bedtime toy to a troubleshooting chart for insomniacs. As a bonus, the book includes the world’s most boring bedtime story. When goddaughter Satu is coming to spend the night at Tatu and Patu’s house, the boys go all out in preparation. Since they’ll have to put her to bed, they’ve composed a new treatise entitled On Dreams, Drowsiness, Bedtime, and Lovely Lullabies or O.D.D.B.A.L.L.

The book explains how to choose the perfect bedtime toy to achieve the optimum stuffed-toy density. There is a troubleshooting diagram for when sleep just won’t come. The boys also figure out how the length of fingernails affects back-scratching and how the soulfulness quotient of a lullaby affects the sleeper’s ability to achieve drowsiness.

The book also tells what really happens when you sleep and leads Tatu and Patu on a wild adventure in dreamland. The true meaning of sleep is made clear, and the terrifying consequences of prolonged night-owling are only too clearly revealed.

Going to Bed
(A full English translation is available upon request.)

Previously published: This is Finland. Also see Tatu and Patu in Helsinki, Tatu and Patu’s Adventures in Outer Space, Tatu and Patu: Superheroes!, and Tatu and Patu’s Amazing Alphabet.

Tatu and Patu’s Amazing Alphabet // Tatun ja Patun Oudot aakkoset

Tatu and Patu's Amazing Alphabet

Otava, 2009

From the Otava Foreign Rights website:

The alphabet is led down memory lane with the boys from Oddsville, where there’s plenty of whacky humour and earth-shaking revelations about the crazy life they’ve lived! With an extra bonus letter: the mark of Oddsville!

Tatu and Patu find a box in the attic brimming with old photos and mementoes of years gone by.

The box is a true cornucopia: there are pictures of their trip to Barbados, a shot of the curling club disco, and one of the Christmas market in Järvenpää. They’ve even made their way into pictures from newspapers and mail-order catalogues. They also find Patu’s messed-up pose from the passport photo booth among the stash.

Included along the way are familiar adventures from the past, like a group photo of the Esikko day care and a series of documentary pictures of what happened when Tatu and Patu went on a picnic with Veera.

At the very bottom of the box is a picture of Oddsville, the place they were born in, but what a shame, the picture is badly worn…

The story of the successful rise to popularity of Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen’s picture books reached a peak when their book This is Finland won the Finlandia Junior Prize in 2007.

They have also received the 2001 Rudolf Koivu Prize and the 2006 Kaarina Helakisa Award, and their book Tatu and Patu in Helsinki was nominated for the Finlandia Junior in 2003. Other adventures of the celebrated brothers from Oddsville can be found in Tatu and Patu’s Oddball Bedtime Book, Tatu and Patu Go to Work, Tatu and Patu’s Mad Machines, Tatu and Patu at the Kindergarten, as well as the four Veera books.

Havukainen and Toivonen have also published two collections of their Home Truths comics for grown-ups.

The rights to the Tatu and Patu books have been sold in more than 10 countries, to publishers such as Kaisei-sha (Japan), Édition Glénat (France), Rabén & Sjögren (Sweden) ja Thinemann (Germany).

Finding even two pages in this one that could be translated sensibly was a challenge, for obvious reasons!

The Letter B
The Letters C and D



See also:

Tatu and Patu’s This is Finland (Published)

Tatu and Patu in Helsinki (Forthcoming)

Tatu and Patu’s Adventures in Outer Space (Sample)

Tatu and Patu as Superheroes! (Sample)

Tatu and Patu’s Oddball Bedtime Book (Sample)