Most of Western literature certainly for essentially for children is supposed to inculcate moral values. Your book's about fun. Is that just like a marketing trick sack or do you want to make it more broadly? I think Joyce was the one who said there are three kinds of books there's propaganda pornography and then the rest is art. And so, so meeting like propaganda is brush your teeth don't be racist stuff I believe and I voiced on my kids because that's what one does. But if you can't tell it with a story it's not good media. If you pick up a French kids book they're much easier to find a book where the kids are just like long stocking
Tolkien read it as a tale about mortality. The poet David Whyte said it was a metaphor for the psychological demons deep in our minds. And that, insists the cartoonist and writer Zach Weinersmith, is precisely Beowulf's appeal: Its richness opens the door to endless interpretation. Listen as the author of Bea Wolf, a graphic novel for children based on the Old English poem, speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poetry in general, Beowulf in particular, whether we should require students to memorize poems, and the value of stories for children even without a moral lesson.