At the Skunk & Burning Tires blog, author Ju-osh M. is – by his own admission – “far too old to be seeking the attention and approval of strangers”. Yet – to adapt a phrase of his – there he was, there I was and here you are. He thought “it would be fun” to revisit animated film-maker Hayao Miyazaki’s “fifty favourite children’s books”. (I am not sure of his source; nor do I know if this is in order of preference). As mentioned before on this site, books by Rosemary Sutcliff were amongst the stories Miyazaki loved.

1. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

2. Il Romanzo di Cipollino (The Adventures of the Little Onion)  by Gianni Rodari

3. The Rose and the Ring by William Makepeace Thackeray

4. The Little Bookroom  by Eleanor Farjeon

5. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

6. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

7. Die Nibelungensage (The Treasure of the Nibelungs) by Gustav Schalk

8. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

9. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

10. A Norwegian Farm  by Marie Hamsun

11. The Humpbacked Horse by Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov

12. Fabre’s Book of Insects by Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre

13. Toui Mukashi no Fushigina Hanashi-Nihon Reiiki by Tsutomu Minakami

14. Ivan the Fool by Leo Tolstoy

15. The Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles (Three books)  by Rosemary Sutcliff

16. Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne 

17. Les Princes du Vent by Michel-Aime Baudouy

18. When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson

19. The Long Winter (Little House) by Laura Ingalls Wilder

20. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

21. The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis

22. Flambards: Trilogy by K. M. Peyton

23. Tom’s Midnight Garden by Ann Philippa Pearce

24. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

25. The Restaurant of Many Orders by Kenji Miyazawa

26. Heidi by Johanna Spyri

27. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

28. The Borrowers by Mary Norton

29. Nine Fairy Tales: and One More Thrown in for Good Measure by Karel Capek

30. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

31. The Flying Classroom by Erich Kästner

32. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

33. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

34. Twelve Months: A Fairy-Tale by Samuil Marshak

35. Tistou: The Boy with Green Thumbs by Maurice Druon

36. The Man Who Planted the Welsh Onions by Kim So-un

37. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling

38. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh John Lofting

39. The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en

40. Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett

41. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

42. The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren

43. The Hobbit; or, There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien

44. A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle) by Ursula K. Le Guin

45. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

46. Bylo nas pet (There Were Five) by Karel Polacek

47. City Neighbour: The Story of Jane Addams by Clara Ingram Judson

48. The Radium Woman – a Life of Madame Curie for the Young by Eleanor Doorly

49. Otterbury Incident by C. Day Lewis

50. Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge

Source: Hayao Miyazaki’s Top 50 Children’s Books – Skunk & Burning Tires.