Beowulf - A Children's Book

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Beowulf is an obscure 1500 year old palm written in, I don't even know what was written in it's been translated many times. And you're riffing on this totally inaccessible palm. At least it's in its original version and turning it into a children's book. What were you thinking? Well, so he's an old English literature major so it's it is part of my working knowledge as a certain type of nerd. It does have these magical qualities in part because we know very little about it.

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.