Hayao Miyazaki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

Once upon a time, books served as the de fac­to refuge of the “phys­i­cal­ly weak” child. For ani­ma­tion leg­end, Hayao Miyaza­ki, above, they offered an escape from the grim­mer real­i­ties of post-World War II Japan.

Many of the 50 favorites he select­ed for a 2010 exhi­bi­tion hon­or­ing pub­lish­er Iwana­mi Shoten’s “Boy’s Books” series are time-test­ed West­ern clas­sics.

Lon­ers and orphans–The Lit­tle Prince, The Secret Gar­denfig­ure promi­nent­ly, as do talk­ing ani­mals (The Wind in the Wil­lows, Win­nie-the-Pooh, The Voy­ages of Doc­tor Dolit­tle).

And while it may be a com­mon­ly-held pub­lish­ing belief that boys won’t read sto­ries about girls, the young Miyaza­ki seemed to have no such bias, rank­ing Hei­di and Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder right along­side Tom Sawyer and Trea­sure Island’s pirates.

Sev­er­al of the titles that made the cut were ones he could only have encoun­tered as a grown up, includ­ing 1967’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er and When Marnie Was There, the lat­ter even­tu­al­ly serv­ing as source mate­r­i­al for a Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie, as did Miyazaki’s top pick, Mary Norton’s The Bor­row­ers.

We invite you to take a nos­tal­gic stroll through Miyazaki’s best-loved children’s books. Read­ers, how many have you read?

Hayao Miyazaki’s Top 50 Children’s Books

  1. The Bor­row­ers — Mary Nor­ton
  2. The Lit­tle Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  3. Chil­dren of Noisy Vil­lage — Astrid Lind­gren
  4. When Marnie Was There — Joan G. Robin­son
  5. Swal­lows and Ama­zons — Arthur Ran­some
  6. The Fly­ing Class­room — Erich Käst­ner
  7. There Were Five of Us — Karel Poláček
  8. What the Neigh­bours Did, and Oth­er Sto­ries — Ann Philip­pa Pearce
  9. Hans Brinker, or The Sil­ver Skates — Mary Mapes Dodge
  10. The Secret Gar­den — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
  11. Eagle of The Ninth — Rose­mary Sut­cliff
  12. The Trea­sure of the Nibelungs — Gus­tav Schalk
  13. The Three Mus­ke­teers — Alexan­dre Dumas, père
  14. A Wiz­ard of Earth­sea — Ursu­la K. Le Guin
  15. Les Princes du Vent — Michel-Aime Bau­douy
  16. The Flam­bards Series — K. M. Pey­ton
  17. Sou­venirs ento­mologiques — Jean Hen­ri Fab­re
  18. The Long Win­ter — Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder
  19. A Nor­we­gian Farm — Marie Ham­sun
  20. Hei­di — Johan­na Spyri
  21. The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer — Mark Twain
  22. Lit­tle Lord Fauntleroy — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
  23. Tis­tou of the Green Thumbs — Mau­rice Druon
  24. The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle
  25. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er — E. L. Konigs­burg
  26. The Otter­bury Inci­dent — Cecil Day-Lewis
  27. Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land — Lewis Car­roll
  28. The Lit­tle Book­room — Eleanor Far­jeon
  29. The For­est is Alive or Twelve Months — Samuil Yakovle­vich Mar­shak
  30. The Restau­rant of Many Orders — Ken­ji Miyaza­wa
  31. Win­nie-the-Pooh — A. A. Milne
  32. Nihon Ryōi­ki – Kyokai
  33. Strange Sto­ries from a Chi­nese Stu­dio — Pu Songling
  34. Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in For Good Mea­sure — Karel Čapek
  35. The Man Who Has Plant­ed Welsh Onions — Kim So-un
  36. Robin­son Cru­soe — Daniel Defoe
  37. The Hob­bit — J. R. R. Tolkien
  38. Jour­ney to the West — Wu Cheng’en
  39. Twen­ty Thou­sand Leagues Under the Sea — Jules Verne
  40. The Adven­tures of the Lit­tle Onion — Gian­ni Rodari
  41. Trea­sure Island — Robert Louis Steven­son
  42. The Ship that Flew — Hil­da Winifred Lewis
  43. The Wind in the Wil­lows — Ken­neth Gra­hame
  44. The Lit­tle Hump­backed Horse — Pyotr Pavlovich Yer­shov (Ershoff)
  45. The Lit­tle White Horse — Eliz­a­beth Goudge
  46. The Rose and the Ring — William Make­peace Thack­er­ay
  47. The Radi­um Woman — Eleanor Door­ly
  48. City Neigh­bor, The Sto­ry of Jane Addams — Clara Ingram Jud­son
  49. Ivan the Fool — Leo Tol­stoy
  50. The Voy­ages of Doc­tor Dolit­tle — Hugh Loft­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll be appear­ing onstage in New York City this June as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.


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Comments (12)
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  • Esa Laaksonen says:

    One Astrid Lind­gren… Good. Ever heard of Tove Jans­son? … Or Salman Rushdie?

  • Catherine Roth says:

    Wow, what a love­ly list! The Ship That Flew was one of my favorites (junior high days, I think) and I was thrilled to find a copy at our main library’s deac­ces­sioned book­store. I think I need to get a few of these and read them as an adult. Any rec­om­men­da­tion from the amaz­ing Mr. Miyaza­ki is worth check­ing out.

  • Bernd says:

    No Michael Ende?! What a shame. Does he know him? Amaz­ing the kind of movies he could do from his mate­r­i­al …

  • Buck says:

    No Ronald Dahl???

  • Tremolo says:

    The Adven­tures of the Lit­tle Onion! Yaaaay!
    Btw, how come all issues on Ama­zon are in Chi­nese? (Except one in Russ­ian.) The link pro­vid­ed in this list says the name of the author is “Gipolli­no Rodari”! (The orig­i­nal title is Cipolli­no.) So weird.
    Any­way, it’s a fan­tas­tic book and we need some reis­sues, pls :)

  • Cookie says:

    Con­sid­er­ing Miyaza­ki tried real­ly hard to get the rights to Pip­pi Long­stock­ing, and Ghi­b­li did the Ron­ja the Rob­ber’s Daugh­ter TV-series, I’m going to go ahead and say the Chil­dren of Noisy Vil­lage is just a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Lind­gren…

    …and maybe he does­n’t con­sid­er Tove Jans­son a chil­dren’s author — Moomin are, after all, huge­ly pop­u­lar in Japan, and clear­ly inspired Stu­dio Ghi­b­li.

  • Brett says:

    That Roald Dahl’s broth­er?

  • Didem Güney says:

    The lit­tle prince

  • Nick says:

    It’s “Roald” Dahl…and it’s his per­son­al favs remem­ber. Not yours !

  • Bernice Ramsdi-Firth says:

    My absolute favourite as a child was ‘The Secret of the Sun God’s Cave’. Gave me a life-long love of sto­ries about ear­ly man, (and woman). Also ‘French Fairy Tales’ was a beau­ti­ful book with won­der­ful fairy sto­ries, and ‘Chil­dren of the Sea’ told of the con­nec­tion between a child who saved a dol­phin and how they con­nect­ed. Would love to have these books today for my own grand­chil­dren.

  • Bernice Ramsdin-Firth says:

    Ber­nice Rams­din-Firth says:
    Feb­ru­ary 6, 2019 at 1:42 pm
    My absolute favourite as a child was ‘The Secret of the Sun God’s Cave’. Gave me a life-long love of sto­ries about ear­ly man, (and woman). Also ‘French Fairy Tales’ was a beau­ti­ful book with won­der­ful fairy sto­ries, and ‘Chil­dren of the Sea’ told of the con­nec­tion between a child who saved a dol­phin and how they con­nect­ed. Would love to have these books today for my own grand­chil­dren.

  • Joaquin Mejia says:

    I have read “The Hob­bit” and “When Marnie was There”. I love Miyaza­k­i’s movies. I also love chil­dren’s books. They are so much more uplift­ing than the books for old­er audi­ences.

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