Inside the Master's Imagination: Hayao Miyazaki's 50 Favorite Children's Books
There's no chance any of us will approach the filmmaker's genius, but understanding the creative DNA of his work might provide you some new and unexpected tools of your own
Please note, I’m in the middle of an interstate move here in Australia, which has disrupted my publishing schedule somewhat. Today should’ve seen one of my weekly features land in your inbox, exclusive to my paid subscribers, but that just wasn’t possible despite my best efforts. Instead, I offer you this piece, available to all subscribers. I should be back to normal next week. Thank you for your understanding!
I came late to Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films, but I think that’s only because my first exposure to him came at a time when I was flailing in-between the unbridled imagination of youth and the dreams of more conventional Hollywood success that drove me in my twenties. His dream-like stories, such as My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997), and Spirited Away (2001), are driven as much by emotion as plot — if not more so. What you feel often propels you more than story turns. This confused me at the time, but so did a lot of films and literary fiction that embraced magical realism of any kind. This started to change not long after, thanks to Federico Fellini’s films and the trend toward magical realism in American short fiction in the ’00s. Eventually, it took over my imagination — which didn’t help me in Hollywood, let me tell you.
Okay, I’m off-topic. I’m here to talk about Miyazaki, not me. But I wanted you to have a bit of context for my own relationship to him and his rather boundless imagination. Whereas most of us have lost touch with how our minds worked as children, Miyazaki clearly never did. His films reflect this, even now at his advanced age; his latest, The Boy and the Heron (2023) is spectacular. It’s why my kids sit through two hours of any film from him without budging, without complaining, utterly hypnotized. They gleefully declare they prefer Miyazaki’s films to Disney’s, in fact. I suspect this is because my kids don’t care about plot like most Disney films do. They care about a nameless emotional experience, and Miyazaki gives that to them in spades. What’s amazing for me, as a parent, is how watching them do this, watching them experience something they could never fully explain - just letting it happen to them in a way they can’t with more dialogue-heavy films - has helped me grow as a storyteller and helped me erect some kind of clunky, wobbly, but still there bridge to my own childhood. Sometimes, sitting with my kids watching one of these, I feel like a kid again myself…if only briefly.
How does Miyazaki accomplish this with his films? Well, that’s a longer conversation, I think, and, frankly, one I don’t think I’m qualified enough to generate. But I do think it’s worth considering how Miyazaki developed the imagination to create so many cinematic masterpieces. I suspect a key place to look is at what he read when he was a child himself, a time he describes himself as “physically weak”. Books were his refuge, and he dreamed of becoming a hero. Instead, he did that through characters in his films.
Below, you will find Hayao Miyazaki’s 50 favorite children’s books. He selected them for a 2010 exhibition that honored Japanese publisher Iwanami Shoten. Hopefully, they point you in some radical, exciting new directions in your own reading. Maybe there’s a future favorite of your own kid’s in there.
So, what do you take away from this list?
THE BORROWERS by Mary Norton
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll
THE HOBBIT by J. R. R. Tolkien
LES PRINCES DU VENT by Michel-Aime Baudouy
THE ADVENTURES OF THE LITTLE ONION by Gianni Rodari
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by Arthur Conan Doyle
TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson
THE SHIP THAT FLEW by Hilda Winifred Lewis
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame
STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO by Pu Songling
NINE FAIRY TALES: AND ONE MORE THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASURE by Karel Čapek
WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE by Joan G. Robinson
THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett
FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER by E. L. Konigsburg
THE OTTERBURY INCIDENT by Cecil Day-Lewis
THE MAN WHO HAS PLANTED WELSH ONIONS by Kim So-un
ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe
THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
CHILDREN OF NOISY VILLAGE by Astrid Lindgren
THE FOREST IS ALIVE OR TWELVE MONTHS by Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak
IVAN THE FOOL by Leo Tolstoy
WHAT THE NEIGHBORS DID, AND OTHER STORIES by Ann Philippa Pearce
HANS BRINKER, OR THE SILVER SKATES by Mary Mapes Dodge
EAGLE OF THE NINTH by Rosemary Sutcliff
THE TREASURE OF THE NIBELUNGS by Gustav Schalk
JOURNEY TO THE WEST by Wu Cheng’en
THE THREE MUSKETEERS by Alexandre Dumas, père
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain
THE LITTLE BOOKROOM by Eleanor Farjeon
LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY by Frances Hodgson Burnett
TISTOU OF THE GREEN THUMBS by Maurice Druon
A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA by Ursula K. Le Guin
THE RESTAURANT OF MANY ORDERS by Kenji Miyazawa
WINNIE-THE-POOH by A. A. Milne
NIHON RYŌIKI by Kyokai
THE FLYING CLASSROOM by Erich Kästner
A NORWEGIAN FARM by Marie Hamsun
THERE WERE FIVE OF US by Karel Poláček
THE LITTLE HUMPBACKED HORSE by Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov (Ershoff)
THE FLAMBARDS SERIES by K. M. Peyton
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules Verne
SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS by Arthur Ransome
SOUVENIRS ENTOMOLOGIQUES by Jean Henri Fabre
THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder
THE RADIUM WOMAN by Eleanor Doorly
HEIDI by Johanna Spyri
THE VOYAGES OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE by Hugh Lofting
THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE by Elizabeth Goudge
THE ROSE AND THE RING by William Makepeace Thackeray
CITY NEIGHBOR, THE STORY OF JANE ADDAMS by Clara Ingram Judson
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“What’s amazing for me, as a parent, is how watching them do this, watching them experience something they could never fully explain - just letting it happen to them in a way they can’t with more dialogue-heavy films - has helped me grow as a storyteller and helped me erect some kind of clunky, wobbly, but still there bridge to my own childhood” - gosh, this moved me! 🥹 Thanks for sharing. Do you have a favorite Miyazaki film, Cole?
I've read 19 of these! Some are my childhood favorites, particularly the Swallows & Amazons series. Thank you for the rest, which I will chase down!