Hayao Miyazaki's 50 Favorite Children's Books Are Definitely Not Just For Kids

The first time I saw Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, I pondered out loud whether it was weird to have a crush on a cartoon character. Howl, with his uncanny brooding abilities, dry sarcasm, and soft spot for Sophie, won me over in a heartbeat. The Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator has a talent for creating characters and worlds that are so believable, it's impossible not to fall in love with them. Some of his animated films are more geared toward children, like Totoro and Spirited Away, but those films — along with so many of his other masterpieces — speak to adults in very real ways as well.

Miyazaki understands the minds of children, and he challenges the minds of adults. His stories are inspiring to so many of us, but what has inspired him? In 2010, Miyazaki listed his favorite children's books of all time, and these 50 reads are a variety of stories from all over the world that will pull at your heart strings and remind you what it was like to be a kid.

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