Tatu and Patu at the Kindergarten

By Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen

Tatu and Patu have won a lottery prize: a free day out at the spa. However, they confuse the signs, and instead of the Funday Fitness Centre, they find themselves in the Under Fives Club, just next door.

So where are the swimming pools, the all-over massage tables, and the health treatments, the boys wonder at first. They realise that they have ended up at the daycare next door, and start to devise different plans with the help of the other kids to get into the spa.

But after mudbaths in the sandpit, a work-out on the climbing frame, some drawing and painting, and rehearsals for the spring pageant play – for which they get to write the plot – Tatu and Patu are convinced that going to daycare is quite as much fun as a day at the spa.

Tatu and Patu at the Kindergarten is a delightful account of an ordinary day at the daycare, written and drawn with hilarious blunders classic to the adventures of the Oddville boys. 

Publishing information

About the author

Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen work together as children’s authors, illustrators, and graphic designers. For the young Finnish readers they are best known as the creators of the hilarious Oddville boys, Tatu and Patu, whose limitless imagination we can admire already in 23 titles to date. The riotous humour of these hugely popular illustrated books appeals to children and adults alike. Tatu and Patu: This is Finland won the Finlandia Junior prize in 2007, and in 2017 the authors were granted the Finland State Prize for Children’s Culture. In Finland Tatu and Patu books have sold over 1.3 million copies and the translation rights have been sold in 31 languages. Aino Havukainen was born in 1968. She graduated as a graphic designer from Lahti Institute of Design in 1992 and has worked as multimedia designer and as an AD in an advertising agency until the beginning of her free lance career in 1996.Sami Toivonen was born in 1971. He graduated also as a graphic designer from Lahti Institute of Design in 1994 and has worked free lance since 1996. He was awarded in 1989 with the Finnish Critics’ Association’s award “Boost for Criticism” for his comic strips, given annually to a young artist for a fresh artistic breakthrough.