David Bowie Performs “Life on Mars?” and “Ashes to Ashes” on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” (1980)

in Music, Television | May 12th, 2023

On Sep­tem­ber 5, 1980, David Bowie per­formed for a delight­ed stu­dio audi­ence on The Tonight Show Star­ring John­ny Car­son. First came “Life on Mars?”, and then his new­ly-released song, “Ash­es to Ash­es.” As his web­site (DavidBowie.com) describes it, the musi­cian cob­bled togeth­er a one-off band for the per­for­mance, ran through sev­er­al rehearsals, and then taped the show at NBC Stu­dios in LA. All of this came days before the release of his 14th stu­dio album Scary Mon­sters (and Super Creeps), and Bowie’s tri­umphant debut in The Ele­phant Man on Broad­way. Enjoy!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

8 Hours of David Bowie’s His­toric 1980 Floor Show: Com­plete & Uncut Footage

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

In Search of the Best Croissant in Protest-Filled Paris

in Food & Drink | May 11th, 2023

An Ital­ian tourist went to Paris in search of the best crois­sant. A nat­ur­al thing to do. Except he did it amidst a city-wide strike, one pre­cip­i­tat­ed by Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise the min­i­mum retire­ment age in France. It all makes for a unique kind of food/travel video.

So what boulan­geries (bak­eries) made the list? Tout Autour du Pain on rue de Turenne; Car­ton Paris on Boule­vard de Denain; Stohrer (estab­lished in 1730) on Rue Mon­torgueil; Du Pain et des Idées on Rue Yves Toudic; and Cedric Gro­let OPÉRA on rue de l’Opéra.

And what bak­ery takes the prover­bial cake? Turns out, it’s Du Pain et des Idées. When we vis­it Paris in June, we’ll be sure to stop by…

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Cus­tomers

See Rid­ley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Adver­tise­ment of All Time

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

The First-Ever Film Version of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Wonderland (1903)

in Film | May 10th, 2023

Once lost, this 8‑minute, very dam­aged, but very delight­ful silent ver­sion of Alice in Won­der­land was restored sev­er­al years ago by the British Film Insti­tute. It is the first film adap­ta­tion of the 1865 Lewis Car­roll clas­sic. And, at the time, the orig­i­nal length of 12 min­utes (only 8 min­utes sur­vive today) made it the longest film com­ing out of the nascent British film indus­try.

After about a minute, the eye ignores the dam­age of the film, like the ear ignores a scratched 78 rpm record. View­ers can expect sev­er­al vignettes from the nov­el, not a flow­ing nar­ra­tive. It starts with Alice fol­low­ing the White Rab­bit down the hole, the “eat me” and “drink me” sequence, the squeal­ing baby that turns into a piglet, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Tea Par­ty, and the Red Queen and her play­ing card min­ions. The col­or­ing of the neg­a­tive is a BFI recon­struc­tion of the orig­i­nal col­ors, by the way.

The film was pro­duced and direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth and Per­cy Stow out of their Hep­worth Stu­dios in Wal­ton-on-the-Thames, near Lon­don. They show knowl­edge of the cam­era trick­ery pio­neered only a few years ear­li­er by Georges Méliès, like the shrink­ing and grow­ing Alice and the appear­ance of the Cheshire Cat. That cat, by the way, was the Hepworth’s fam­i­ly pet. Hep­worth him­self plays the frog-head­ed foot­man, and his wife played the Red Queen.

May Clark, who played Alice, was 18 at the time, and had already worked on sev­er­al Hep­worth pro­duc­tions, and not just act­ing. Accord­ing to her bio at the Women Film Pio­neers project, she did a bit of every­thing around the stu­dio, “from spe­cial effects and set dec­o­ra­tion to cos­tume design and car­pen­try.” The ear­ly days of film have a real “stu­dent project” feel about them, no pigeon­holed roles, just every­body chip­ping in.

As for Cecil Hep­worth, he appeared des­tined for a career in film, as his father ran mag­ic lantern shows. Cecil worked for sev­er­al com­pa­nies before set­ting up his own and wrote one of the first books on the sub­ject, Ani­mat­ed Pho­tog­ra­phy: The ABC of the Cin­e­mato­graph. His com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to make films in this ear­ly style through 1926, but even­tu­al­ly ran out of mon­ey. To pay off debts, the receiver­ship com­pa­ny melt­ed down his films to get the sil­ver, which was the rea­son most schol­ars thought his films were lost. In 2008, one of his films was dis­cov­ered, and then “Alice.” There may still be oth­ers out there.

You can find Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land list­ed in our oth­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Told in Sand Ani­ma­tion

Curi­ous Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Won­der­land That Made Drugs Look Like Fun

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

What the Great Pyramids of Giza Originally Looked Like

in Architecture, History | May 9th, 2023

Ask any­one who’s trav­eled to the Great Pyra­mids of Giza: no mat­ter how many times you’ve seen them in pho­tographs or on tele­vi­sion, you’re nev­er real­ly pre­pared to come face-to-face with them in real life. But you can get fair­ly close to at least the appear­ance of real life by see­ing the Pyra­mids in 4k res­o­lu­tion, as they’re pre­sent­ed in the video above from trav­el, archi­tec­ture, and his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tion of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome atop the Flo­rence Cathe­dral). This isn’t just vaca­tion footage: Bra­vo tells the sto­ry of the Pyra­mids, puts them in con­text, and even incor­po­rates vir­tu­al re-cre­ations of what they would have looked like in their hey­day.

We know the Pyra­mids as icon­ic ruins, undoubt­ed­ly mighty but also seri­ous­ly dilap­i­dat­ed. When they were built in the 26th cen­tu­ry BC, they were cov­ered in white lime­stone exte­ri­or shells, giv­ing them the strik­ing­ly smooth if chro­mat­i­cal­ly reversed appear­ance of a 2001-style mono­lith — a char­ac­ter­is­tic that no doubt encour­ages cer­tain the­o­rists who imag­ine the con­struc­tion process as hav­ing been exe­cut­ed by beings from out­er space.

The tech­ni­cal­ly inclined Bra­vo pre­sum­ably has lit­tle time for such notions, fill­ing the video as he does with details about the archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing of the Pyra­mids, many of them thor­ough­ly human in nature, such as the delib­er­ate­ly con­fus­ing pas­sage­ways meant to throw off plun­der­ers.

Along with high-res­o­lu­tion footage and ren­der­ings of what the Pyra­mids looked like then and look like now, Bra­vo also includes his own on-foot explo­rations, show­ing us cor­ners of the com­plex (and one espe­cial­ly claus­tro­phobe-unfriend­ly tun­nel) that we don’t nor­mal­ly see unless we take a tour our­selves. This close-up per­spec­tive gives him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect the mod­ern human expe­ri­ence of these ancient mon­u­ments to their vast scale and his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tant con­cep­tion. To be awed and even over­whelmed is per­haps the most nat­ur­al response to the Pyra­mids, and for some, it’s worth the trip to expe­ri­ence that feel­ing alone. For oth­ers, answer­ing the ques­tion of exact­ly how and why they awe and over­whelm becomes the work of a life­time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Take a 360° Inter­ac­tive Tour Inside the Great Pyra­mid of Giza

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Star Wars Film Made in a Wes Anderson Aesthetic

in Film, Random | May 4th, 2023

Above, you can watch the Galac­tic Menagerie, “a whim­si­cal and visu­al­ly stun­ning fan-made fake trail­er that reimag­ines the clas­sic Star Wars uni­verse through the eccen­tric lens of Wes Ander­son. This enchant­i­ng mashup brings togeth­er icon­ic Star Wars char­ac­ters with Ander­son­’s trade­mark sym­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tions, pas­tel col­or palettes, and quirky humor.” There are also, of course, “pecu­liar loca­tions rem­i­nis­cent of Ander­son­’s beloved films such as Moon­rise King­dom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Wes Ander­son Goes Sci-Fi in 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch the Trail­er for His New Film Aster­oid City

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

How the Aston­ish­ing Sushi Scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Was Ani­mat­ed: A Time-Lapse of the Month-Long Shoot

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

How the Art of Patrick Nagel, Still Seen in Nail Salons Today, Crystallized the 1980s Aesthetic

in Art, History | May 2nd, 2023

To find a visu­al def­i­n­i­tion of the nine­teen-eight­ies, you need look no fur­ther than the win­dows of the near­est run-down hair or nail salon. There, “fad­ed by time and years of sun dam­age,” remain on makeshift dis­play the most wide­ly rec­og­nized works of — or imi­ta­tions of the works of — artist and illus­tra­tor Patrick Nagel, who spe­cial­ized in images of women with “sleek black hair, paper-white skin, bold red lip­stick and a look of mys­tery, pow­er, and cool detach­ment.” So says Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, in his new video essay above on the sud­den rise and last­ing cul­tur­al lega­cy of the “Nagel women.”

As Puschak tells the sto­ry, the fig­ure respon­si­ble for launch­ing Nagel and his women into the zeit­geist was pub­lish­er Karl Born­stein, who “had been in Europe admir­ing the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bon­nard, Parisian poster artists of the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and came back to Amer­i­ca look­ing for an artist of his own time when Nagel walked into his life.”

Around this same time, “the man­ag­er of the Eng­lish new-wave band Duran Duran saw Nagel’s work in Play­boy, and com­mis­sioned a pic­ture for the cov­er of their 1982 album Rio” — which, apart from all those salon win­dows, gave most of us our first look at a Nagel woman.

These and oth­er pop-cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tions “helped to cement the Nagel woman as an emblem of the decade.” For years after Nagel’s death in 1984, his “chic, fash­ion­able, inde­pen­dent” women con­tin­ued to serve as “aspi­ra­tional images,” but even­tu­al­ly, amid mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion and chang­ing sen­si­bil­i­ties, their bold look of glam­or and pro­fes­sion­al­ism began to seem tacky. Nev­er­the­less, redis­cov­ery always fol­lows desue­tude, and suf­fi­cient dis­tance from the actu­al eight­ies has allowed us to appre­ci­ate Nagel’s  tech­nique. “Day by day, lit­tle by lit­tle, Nagel removed details until he arrived at the fewest num­ber of lines that would still cap­ture the spir­it of his mod­els,” using rig­or­ous min­i­mal­ism to evoke — and for­ev­er crys­tal­lize — a time of brazen excess.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Who Designed the 1980s Aes­thet­ic?: Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Design­ers Who Cre­at­ed the 80s Icon­ic Look

How Art Nou­veau Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic Designs of the 1960s

Down­load 200+ Belle Époque Art Posters: An Archive of Mas­ter­pieces from the “Gold­en Age of the Poster” (1880–1918)

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed Exclu­sive­ly to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Stephen King Recommends 96 Books for Aspiring Writers to Read

in Books | April 25th, 2023

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

I first dis­cov­ered Stephen King at age 11, indi­rect­ly through a babysit­ter who would plop me down in front of day­time soaps and dis­ap­pear. Bored with One Life to Live, I read the stacks of mass-mar­ket paper­backs my absen­tee guardian left around—romances, mys­ter­ies, thrillers, and yes, hor­ror. It all seemed of a piece. King’s nov­els sure looked like those oth­er lurid, pulpy books, and at least his ear­ly works most­ly fit a cer­tain for­mu­la, mak­ing them per­fect­ly adapt­able to Hol­ly­wood films. Yet for many years now, as he’s ranged from hor­ror to broad­er sub­jects, King’s cul­tur­al stock has risen far above his genre peers. He’s become a “seri­ous” writer and even, with his 2000 book On Writ­ing—part mem­oir, part “textbook”—something of a writer’s writer, mov­ing from the super­mar­ket rack to the pages of The Paris Review. 

Few con­tem­po­rary writ­ers have chal­lenged the some­what arbi­trary divi­sion between lit­er­ary and so-called genre fic­tion so much as Stephen King, whose sta­tus pro­vokes word wars like this debate at the Los Ange­les Review of Books. What­ev­er adjec­tives crit­ics throw at him, King plows ahead, turn­ing out book after book, refin­ing his craft, hap­pi­ly shar­ing his insights, and read­ing what­ev­er he likes. As evi­dence of his dis­re­gard for aca­d­e­m­ic canons, we have his read­ing list for writ­ers, which he attached as an appen­dix to On Writ­ing. Best-sell­ing genre writ­ers like Nel­son DeMille, Thomas Har­ris, and needs-no-intro­duc­tion J.K. Rowl­ing sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples like Dick­ens, Faulkn­er, and Con­rad. King rec­om­mends con­tem­po­rary real­ist writ­ers like Richard Bausch, John Irv­ing, and Annie Proulx along­side the occa­sion­al post­mod­ernist or “dif­fi­cult” writer like Don DeLil­lo or Cor­mac McCarthy. He includes sev­er­al non-fic­tion books as well.

King pref­aces the list with a dis­claimer: “I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all.” Below, we’ve excerpt­ed twen­ty good reads he rec­om­mends for bud­ding writ­ers. These are books, King writes, that direct­ly inspired him: “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote.” To the writer, he says, “a good many of these might show you some new ways of  doing your work.” And for the read­er? “They’re apt to enter­tain you. They cer­tain­ly enter­tained me.”

10. Richard Bausch, In the Night Sea­son
12. Paul Bowles, The Shel­ter­ing Sky
13. T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle, The Tor­tilla Cur­tain
17. Michael Chabon, Were­wolves in Their Youth
28. Rod­dy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
31. Alex Gar­land, The Beach
42. Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
49. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club
53. Bar­bara King­solver, The Poi­son­wood Bible
54. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
58. Nor­man Maclean, A Riv­er Runs Through It and Oth­er Sto­ries
62. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ash­es
66. Ian McE­wan, The Cement Gar­den
67. Lar­ry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
70. Joyce Car­ol Oates, Zom­bie
71. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
73. Michael Ondaat­je, The Eng­lish Patient
84. Richard Rus­so, Mohawk
86. Vikram Seth, A Suit­able Boy
93. Anne Tyler, A Patch­work Plan­et

Like much of King’s own work, many of these books sug­gest a spec­trum, not a chasm, between the lit­er­ary and the com­mer­cial, and many of their writ­ers have found suc­cess with screen adap­ta­tions and Barnes & Noble dis­plays as well as wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim. For the full range of King’s selec­tions, see the entire list of 96 books at Aero­gramme Writ­ers’ Stu­dio.

You can also find anoth­er list of 82 books rec­om­mend­ed by King here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 82 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers (to Sup­ple­ment an Ear­li­er List of 96 Rec­om­mend Books)

Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Stephen King’s 22 Favorite Movies: Full of Hor­ror & Sus­pense

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Iggy Pop Perform Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

in Music, Poetry | April 24th, 2023

Of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of the Stooges, only Iggy Pop still lives. He has by now sur­vived a great many oth­er cul­tur­al fig­ures who came up from the under­ground and into promi­nence through rock music in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. And not only is he still alive, he’s still putting out albums: his most recent, Every Los­er, came out just this past Jan­u­ary. It fol­lowed Free, from 2019, which includes his read­ing of Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night” — an idea, Aman­da Petru­sich notes in a con­tem­po­rary New York­er pro­file, that came “after an adver­tis­ing agency asked him to read the poem for a com­mer­cial voice-over.”

“At first, I resist­ed,” Pop says to Petru­sich. “I’m not in junior high.” Indeed, as a vehi­cle for the expres­sion of one’s own world­view, “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night” feels about one rung up from “The Road Not Tak­en.”

Petru­sich acknowl­edges that “the poem has grown increas­ing­ly mean­ing­less over time, hav­ing been repeat­ed and adapt­ed to so many inane cir­cum­stances. Yet if you can shake off its famil­iar­i­ty the cen­tral idea — that a per­son should live vig­or­ous­ly, unapolo­get­i­cal­ly — remains ger­mane.” Pop’s dis­tinc­tive Mid­west­ern voice, made hag­gard but res­o­nant by decade after decade of punk-rock rig­ors, also imbues it with an unex­pect­ed vital­i­ty.

It may sur­prise those who know Pop main­ly through his brazen onstage antics of half a cen­tu­ry ago that it would occur to him to read a poem at all. In fact, he’s a man of many and var­ied lit­er­ary inter­ests, hav­ing also per­formed the work of Walt Whit­man and Edgar Allan Poe, writ­ten about Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and made a film with Michel Houelle­becq (whose nov­els inspired Pop’s 2009 album Prélim­i­naires). All of this while he has kept on show­ing us, both on records and in live per­for­mances, how prop­er­ly to rage, rage — against the dying of the light, and much else besides.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Clas­sic Poem, “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night” Per­formed by John Cale (and Pro­duced by Bri­an Eno)

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins Reads Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Dylan Thomas Sketch­es a Car­i­ca­ture of a Drunk­en Dylan Thomas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Nathan Lane Breaks Down His Broadway Career

in Theatre | April 21st, 2023

Play­bill writes: “Nathan Lane is cur­rent­ly star­ring on Broad­way in ‘Pic­tures From Home,’ oppo­site Zoë Wana­mak­er (who plays his wife) and Dan­ny Burstein (who plays his son). In the inau­gur­al entry to Play­bil­l’s new video series, ‘My Life in the The­atre,’ Lane sits down with a Play­bill binder con­tain­ing every Play­bill from every show he’s ever done on Broad­way. Lane walks us through his career, includ­ing the time he asked Sond­heim to write new songs for ‘The Frogs,’ how he almost changed his name to Nor­man Lane, and the pro­duc­tion where he played a ‘thug ver­sion of Don­ald Trump.’ ”

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent 

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

Watch Lin-Manuel Miran­da Per­form the Ear­li­est Ver­sion of Hamil­ton at the White House, Six Years Before the Play Hit the Broad­way Stage (2009)

Hayao Miyazaki Selects His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

in Books | April 19th, 2023

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 Gar­den–fig­ure 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

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Archive of 7,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized & Free to Read Online

Clas­sic Children’s Books Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: Revis­it Vin­tage Works from the 19th & 20th Cen­turies

Clas­sic Children’s Books Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: Revis­it Vin­tage Works from the 19th & 20th Cen­turies

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.