Werner Herzog Reads Children’s Stories

By David Ross. Who is the mad genius who so thoroughly inhabits the mind (and accent) of Werner Herzog and brings us these marvelous children’s stories, told for the first time with proper attention to their horrifying subtexts — their terrible occlusions?

• Werner Herzog reads Madeline.
• Werner Herzog reads Curious George.
• Werner Herzog reads Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.
• Werner Herzog reads Where’s Waldo.

On a more serious but related note, let me recommend the informative documentary Virginia Lee Burton: A Sense of Place (2008), which tells the story of the author and illustrator of Mike Mulligan and several other classics of children’s literature. Burton was the most inventive artist ever to devote herself exclusively to children’s literature. Her every page is a little cosmos of detail; detail coalesces into pattern; pattern comes alive as rhythm. Among modern American illustrators and cartoonists, only Saul Steinberg more completely transcended his job description and ascended into the sphere of high art (New Yorker subscribers should have a look at Adam Gopnik’s brilliant essay on Steinberg; Updike was another ardent, life-long admirer).

[Editor's Note: on a related note, LFM Editor Apuzzo recommends Klaus Kinski reading "The Selfish Giant" by Oscar Wilde (auf deutsch) from the 1962 film Der Rote Rausch.]

Posted on July 15th, 2010 at 10:35am.