Suggested topic: name the first book that you can remember reading. I don’t recall spending any time with children’s books, but I remember feeling totally captivated by a Time-Life series on ghosts, aliens and the unknown. Pro tip: let your subscription lapse after number ten or twelve.
Reader Interactions
115Comments
Comments are closed.
General Winfield Stuck
Easy one. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers.
wmd
A Wrinkle in TIme,
Madeline L’Engle
Spiffy McBang
One of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. No idea which one- I used to get them all from the library.
Edit: I know, no politics, but technically this is about e-mail- Tim, I sent a few more names you can add to the list, but that assumes the link on the right is correct. I just want to make sure you got it.
OriGuy
I remember reading a lot of children’s books, but I don’t recall a lot of names. Our house burned down when I was eight, so all of those books disappeared. I read the Beatrice and Ramona series by Beverly Cleary and the Bobbsey Twin books. The first book that really stayed with me was Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.
mousebumples
The first book I actually read was (I think) a Berenstain Bear book. I can’t recall which one, exactly, but maybe one involving a bike ride?
First adult-ish book that I remember reading is probably Rifles for Waite. But, yes, I’m one of those bookish nerd types who loves to read and who oftentimes would fall asleep with a book in hand growing up.
freelancer (itouch)
Was read E. B. White the Trumpeter Swan in 4th grade, remember reading Stuart Little and loving it, but where my literary career took off was the mystery stylings of Donald J. Sobel’s Encyclopedia Brown series.
wb
Pilot Down, Presumed Dead by Marjorie Phleger.
I checked it out of my school’s library when I was in grade school. I won’t admit how many years ago. I still have vivid memories of that story to this day.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Arthur’s Funny Money, by Lillian Hoban. Great series of books.
Steve V
I remember being addicted to the Asterix and Tintin stories and reading all the ones I can find. Or do those not count as books? The first real book, without pictures, was probably Treasure Island.
jnfr
Toss up between Alice in Wonderland and Black Beauty.
Although my mother used to read me the Poky Little Puppy book, does that count?
Warren Terra
My first books must have been reading primers, and I remember fragments of one, but the first books I remember getting really into were Lloyd Alexander’s Prydian (sp?) books, prob. when I was 8 or so.
jacy
Oh, so many.
Dr. Suess, Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl early.
A Wrinkle in Time and anything else by Madeline L’engle.
Anything by Zilpha Keatley Snyder — who is almost 100 and still writing children’s books in California.
I was obsessed with HP Lovecraft when I was about 8, which probably tells you all you need to know about me.
I loved the paperback racks in Duckwalls by the hardware section where you could get “World’s Best Horror” anthologies for 75 cents.
I also lived for the Scholastic book flyers that came to school. I had a special fund just for that, and would see how many books I could buy each time. I also would come out of the library each week with a stack large enough that the librarian always questioned how I was going to read that many books. Eventually they stopped asking me.
Which reminds me, I have 15 books on my bedside table and no time to read them. Ah, to be a kid again.
AB
The first book I remember reading independently was one about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the library in second or third grade. I might have read some magic school bus books (there was a book series), and one about the history of dinosaurs in first, but I don’t really remember those too well.
After that, I think the Goosebumps series got big, and I always used to like reading the old Hardy Boys books. Then there was animorphs…
cleek
the first i remember reading was a kids’ version of Robinson Crusoe. this was 3rd or 4th grade, probably. but there were certainly others before that, maybe some Hardy Boys. i know there was a kids Bible Stories book at one point, but i don’t remember any of the stories, so i don’t know if i was reading it, per se.
kdaug
First one was some Curious George book – he got away from the Man in the Yellow Hat and ended up getting wasted on ether.
First one that I remember hitting me hard (~7 years old) was Life After Life by Raymond Moody. Not sure why they had that in the elementary school library in a conservative Christian town in Texas (Plano), but they did. And I read it.
Really changed my perspectives at a very early age.
-K
ohollern
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron.
Uriel
A children’s book entitled “a cat named spooky” or something like that. I think it’s out of print now- I tried goggling it. Many of my results were not fit for children.
Scott H
Probably Blaze and Billy or something. I picked up Space Eagle later, but by then I knew it was crap but liked it anyway.
Scott H +6
General Winfield Stuck
@ohollern:
I took that flight a few times. Never read the book though.
==-+
I put on MSNBC for the first time in a while and I didn’t bother pausing the TiVo so I could skip the commercials.
Have you seen this Humane Society ad? The one with all the abused animals? It was soul crushing. What the FUCK is that all about? It actually pissed me off. It’s emotional blackmail taken to the extreme.
I love animals. I have 2 cats and a dog (poor dog). I donate to the SPCA. I volunteer at my local shelter. I think pets are a higher order of being than humans.
While I hadn’t considered donating to the Humane Society before, I sure as shit won’t now.
You Don't Say
Winnie-the-Pooh
arguingwithsignposts
Encyclopedia Brown – the whole series.
ellaesther
Betsy, Tacy & Tib. Alllllllllllllll of them. I think I kind of wanted to be Betsy. More than kind of.
I also have a pretty clear memory of reading Go Ask Alice when I was in 4th grade. Just say no, kids!
Max
Where the Sidewalk Ends. Shel Silverstein.
I bought SuperFudge by Judy Blume for my niece today. Going to get her hooked at The Blume. Although she is years away from Forever.
soonergrunt
I read a whole lot in elementary school. I don’t remember all of them, but I remember Encyclopedia Brown and other books like that–what my kids call “chapter books.” I remember reading The Great Brain series in the fourth or fifth grade.
The first real novel I remember reading was Watership Down when I was ten.
SGEW
I’ve given this some serious thought now, and I honestly have to say that I can’t remember. But it was probably either “The Hobbit” or “Tom Sawyer.”
Scott H
@arguingwithsignposts: well, yea, I recall those too, but I think they were later on. Alfred Hithcocks’ Three Investigators series, also.
Andy K
It was either a biography (of Lincoln, JFK or R.E. Lee) or a book about the greatest NFL championship games (which, after re-reading it lately at my dad’s place, was definitely not targeted at 7-year olds).
erlking
My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.
That book still rocks.
Mattsky
Go, Dog, Go by P. D. Eastman was my first book. I had the book memorized from my older brother reading it to me before I could actually read it.
Scott H
@soonergrunt: oooh, Great Brain. That was good, too. A kid’s perspective on frontier life.
Cat Lady
@General Winfield Stuck: LOL. I did too.
Learned to read with Dick and Jane and Spot books, but loved Harold and the Purple Crayon, Madeleine books and Dr. Seuss and more Dr. Seuss – Bartholomew and the Ooblek was my first big favorite. Greek myths for kids.
My sister tells me I read all of the Golden Book Encyclopedias, and always had the dictionary open. OK.
Libertini
My parents read me Oh Captain Kitty until I had it memorized and could “read” it myself, before the age of 2. It’s out of print now and I had a heck of a time finding a copy, but it was worth it. What an amazing children’s story!
I was a great reader by age 3, and before I entered first grade, I had already read a teacher’s edition of the Jack and Janet reading series that my Mom found at a garage sale.
I also have memories of being able to buy books through the Weekly Reader or some other such kids publishing organization through my school. Even at a young age, I hated begging my parents for money, but for books, I would beg, and beg, and beg. I circled WAY more books than I knew I would get on the order form, so that I might get 2 or 3 instead of just one. I remember buying, reading and enjoying Stuart Little and several others through this program. There was some mystery story involving fudge – I know it’s a vague memory, but does any other 40 something remember this book? It was VERY popular.
Later, when other teens and pre-teens were reading Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys, I spent my allowance on the entire Trixie Belden series, one at a time, mind you, but I DID collect the entire set.
Thanks for this topic. Remembering my early reading stories (and reading those of others) is just the tonic for this crappy, crappy week!
Betsy
I remember my first two chapter books, although I don’t remember which came first:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Pippi Longstocking. Good times.
CanadaGoose
Alice in Wonderland
MattR
Probably not the earliest book I remember, but there was a Time Life type book on the solar system that I read and re-read numerous times while I was in elementary school. I know I read Dr Seuss and Winnie the Pooh, but I cant really ermember actually reading them. I can definitely remember reading some of the other books mentioned: Encyclopedia Brown, A Wrinkle in Time, My Father’s Dragon, Dear Mr Henshaw and others from Beverly Cleary.
I am sure there is some good stuff that I am forgetting. I’d kinda like to see the complete history of what I took out from the library when I was younger. If only the Patriot Act had been passed 25 years ealier.
auntieeminaz
L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. Read them under my pillow with a flashlight when I was supposed to be sleeping. Pretended to be sick so I didn’t have to go to church and I could finish the book.
bend
Where the Red Fern Grows
cried my five year-old eyes out
DaddyJ
A Golden Book called The Little Fat Policeman was the first book I remember. First independent book may have been Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth. I remember being proud to have read it “all by myself,” so it must have been early on. Read a lot of Verne, Conan Doyle in my grade school years.
Yutsano
I should hate you for this Tim F., if for no other reason than I started reading at 18 months and had a second grade reading level when I started kindergarten at four. So by then I had read so much that I can’t exactly recall what the first book I read was. Most of the options here apply to me though.
Jane_in_Colorado
“The Princess and the Goblin” by George MacDonald. I love it still.
kdaug
@Libertini: 42, and I remember the Weekly Reader program (and Highlight Magazines, and there was some Boy Scout/Eagle Scout periodical too, but I don’t remember what it was called.)
There was also “How to Eat Fried Worms” that I read, recommended to my teachers, and got to read to my entire 5th grade class. I bought that one for a nephew a few years ago – great book for 9-10 year olds.
Lennox
scary stories to tell in the dark… all the way
cleek
@==-+:
oh yeah. we change the channel when that thing comes on. my wife cannot stand it, but i always find myself laughing at the sheer audacity of it.
LOOK AT THE DISEASED KITTY! LOOK AT IT! LOOK CLOSER!
“WHY DO THE PEEPLZ HURTZ ME? WHY?“
Delia
As far as the full chapter novels go, it was probably The Wizard of Oz and all the subsequent Oz books. I loved those.
One thing I always hated about the movie is that the whole adventure was only a dream.
ruemara
In grade school, I think I was mostly into El Cid, Mort d’Arthur and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. But my biggest thing was running off with my stepdad’s college anthropology & history textbooks and reading all the bloody Mayan & Incan stuff.
LOVE!
Then I started on Tolkien and went through Hobbit, LOTR & Silmarillien and his bio, over & over & over.
My poor mum never understood why I wouldn’t touch Pride & Predjudice with a ten foot pole. No damn zombies, mom.
Parole Officer Burke
@Yutsano: Nobody likes a braggart.
OCD
Go Dog Go!
coffeegirl
either “Stig of the Dump” or “Who’s a Pest?”…..
Libertini
@Parole Officer Burke: I think I may have unintentionally started it, but I don’t have any problem with bragging about early reading skills. Consider it a tribute to excellent parenting.
@Yutsano: I was a very early reader too. My cheapskate Dad (God rest his soul) worked three jobs so that I could start private school first grade at age 5. It was both a grand sacrifice, and a relief, I think, to get me out of the house and learning under someone else’s tutelage.
Mayken
First book at all: “Never Tease a Weasel.” First chapter book: “The Black Stallion.”
Elfquest, Tintin and all the Walter Farley books were my obsessions when I was like 9 or 10.
Mayken
@jacy: Oh, gods, the scholastic book flyers and the book mobiles! Those and libraries, I could never get enough of ’em.
Yutsano
@Libertini: I am the total product of public education, that and a mother who taught me to read basically all on her own (Dad was out to sea for the majority of my childhood). Public education all up through my BA, so I’m a huge believer in an educational system that works when done effectively. My parents even discussed sending me to a private school, but as the child of an interfaith marriage a religious school was out (although my father did make a power play to send me to a yeshiva in Seattle) and there were no affordable secular schools nearby, so I had to survive the boredom of public high school.
@Parole Officer Burke: Well, the Dawg does like to rub it in that I don’t do humility well. Though usually he says that when he catches me stroking his ego.
Ranger 3
A Cricket in Times Square by George Seldon
aceckhouse
I am fairly certain that the first memory of my life (that I still retain) is of my mother reading from the Lord of the Rings books. Specifically The Return of the King. Specifically the scene where the lord of the Nazgul raises up his mace.
Nylund
If I thought hard about it I could probably remember something earlier, but the first that really affected me was:
“My Brother Sam is Dead”
Its about a teenager in the continental army that gets executed for a crime he didn’t commit (stealing a cow).
I think the horror of it really pressed into me the importance of truth and justice.
Mayken
@Libertini and Yutsano: and I was also an early reader though not quite that early. The only kid in kindergarten to have school library privileges. My father was ahead of the times (or a throwback to older times depending on your perspective) in thinking it was silly to wait until a child was 5 to teach them to read.
Anybody else a Clifford the Big Red Dog fan? And yeah, Curious George was another obsession as a tyke.
Apsalar
Well, my mother tells a story of 2-year-old me “reading” a book to anyone who would sit still long enough, and they’d be amazed, until she told them that I only had the thing memorized including when to turn the pages. But I don’t remember it and that doesn’t count anyway. I do remember reading “How to Eat Fried Worms” in 2nd grade, and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 3rd grade. In the fizzy lifting drink scene, Willy Wonka says “ass” and we kids all thought that was hilarious, and we were allowed to say it! hahahahahahahaha
I also remember reading a story in a 2nd grade textbook about Oak Island, and that has stayed with me.
Andy K
@Apsalar:
Roald Dahl was the ass man. He did the same thing in James and the Giant Peach. That’s the one that had my sister and me rolling when mom read it to us.
KDP
Uncle Wiggily’s Adventures, when I was 5 or 6. I also remember being frightened by the adventures of the lame old rabbit. Beyond that, my childhood was spent reading our encyclopedia (at random pages), all of the 16 Children’s Hour books, the assorted “A Treasury of ….” books that came along with the encyclopedia set, my father’s English Literature textbook from high school, and my grandmother’s novels that were hidden in an attic bookshelf.
From our grade school library, I remember a series of biographies of famous people as children. Ernie Pyle, Juliette Lowe, Helen Keller are the ones that stick in my mind. Does anyone recall those?
Started reading early and it’s as necessary to me as breathing.
The Raven
It was a train picture book, and I don’t remember the title. I think by age five I’d just about learned to read from it.
Porlock Junior
I thought first of Through the Looking Glass, because I remember pretty clearly my first reading of that. But for that reason I know there were various Dinosaurs and Things books before, one of which gave me my first lesson in epistemology (rather, my father did), which eventually was useful. But the first book that I remember clearly was Toad of Toad Hall, A. A. Milne’s stage adaptation of The Wind in the Willows (which, oddly, I didn’t read till many years after). This was given to me while or just after I was in the hospital with pneumonia, which places it just before I was 7.
So many things in that book were mysterious to me. Never read things at your grade level, but everyone here knows that. And BTW “Poop-poop. Poop-poop!” was not a giggle line in that faraway time and place.
Thanks to erlking for naming My Father’s Dragon. When I read that to my son years ago, I realized that it was a book that a teacher had read to the class 40-some years before. Heckuva story!
Cement Stove Will
Liberal Fascism was the first book I bought but it was a little too long to finish. I was able to get through Glenn Beck’s Common Sense which was a wonderful book. Going Rogue is on the coffee table for guests, but I’m not planning on touching it. I see no point in reading 300 pages on a topic when I can get the gist of it in an easy to consume package. This is why I prefer magazines, USA Today, and the occasional peer-reviewed journal for when I’m feeling frisky and/or constipated.
D. Aristophanes
Sounder
robertdsc
Thomas Brothers Los Angeles County map book from my dad’s truck.
Comrade Luke
A Wrinkle In Time.
I had the chicken pox at the time :)
Ecks
@coffeegirl: Snap!
Stig of the dump for me too. Yay brit lit ;)
daniel
Tolkien’s Middle Earth series inc. The Hobbitt.
R-Jud
I was reading before I was three, according to my parents, and I can remember reading a “Mr. Men” book out loud to my nursery school class.
The first book I read that made me realize there are WRITERS behind books was the Hobbit; I guess this would’ve been the summer between first and second grade. I read LOTR during second grade. A lot of it went over my head, but I can remember thinking “Someone made all this up. He made it up. I want to do that too!”
I still read very fast. It’s kind of my only real talent.
Coincidence: behind our local pub there’s a little house that Tolkien used to live in with his mother before he was orphaned. It was his last non-institutional home.
Glyph_2112
The first real book I ever remember reading was “Two Wheeled Thunder” in 4th grade (in the 70’s).
But what really sparked my reading was the Dragon Riders of Pern series that I bought to impress a girl that worked at the book store. After that it was Dune, and then the Xanth series and I was a committed reader from there on in.
Anne Laurie
@KDP:
Yes, the Childhood of Famous Americans series from Bobbs-Merrill Co. (educational press), originally published between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. When this topic was raised on Sadly, No some time back, I found my old favorites “Louisa Alcott: Girl of Old Boston” and “Abigail Adams: Child of Colonial Days” on ABE, for about ten bucks each. From that small sample, I’d say they’ve held up much better than I feared… both Adams and Alcott are presented as strong-minded independent children who grew up to make good lives for themselves & their families, excellent role models for a proto-feminist like me.
The good thing about finding these lost treasures from my childhood is discovering that some of them, at least, are still in print (Scholastic Books now, I think). The scary part is that they were written for primary readers, approximately 2nd-4th graders, but they’re now rated as appropriate for junior to senior high schoolers!
Zuzu's Petals
Adventures in Bookland series.
All Nancy Drew all the time.
Of course the big, big one: Little Women.
That last is the one I gave my granddaughter before she was born…at a “bring your favorite childhood book” baby shower.
Zuzu's Petals
@==-+:
Well I have to admit that the Sarah McLachlin “Angel” ad for ASPCA – with all the little one-eyed critters – made me sign up for my $18/mo.
Zuzu's Petals
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Uh wait, make that Journeys through Bookland. Yep, an old set.
Texpunk
My mom (now in a nursing home and unable to communicate) taught me to read at 2 1/2, a book called “See My Toys”. She copied the letters of a children’s book into an oversize binder so I could understand them. My smartass parents used to have me read restaurant menus at age 3. I remember none of this.
I think (!) I remember being assigned to read a book for school called “Young John Kennedy”, early 1970’s, elementary school, suburban Houston. In retrospect, my parents (older; Nixon voters) were probably appalled, but they never expressed anything negative to me.
I know I read a lot of Dr Seuss, but I can’t say I “remember” it at all ???? Old Yeller!
James and the giant peach/Charlie and the chocolate factory. I vaguely remember?
So, the first book I *remember* reading and re-reading over and over:”D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths”: 4th-5th grade??? 1974-5??? Fully illustrated. Magical!
I clearly remember being transported to another realm of knowledge/culture/imagination. Wonderful!
Also remember reading “The Amityville Horror” in like 3 days . . . sleepless . . . when It came out.
Badtux
I don’t recall which of the books of the Good Doctor was first, but it was either Green Eggs and Ham or Horton Hears a Who. Demented, wicked, subversive, was that Dr. Seuss!
Xenos
‘Go Dog Go’ was the first reading experience,
Something about a cat (Jenny ?) who lived in a Firehouse and danced the hornpipe was the first chapter book.
Then straight to the Roy Chapman Andrews books about Dinosaurs and fossil hunting.
Gravenstone
First book I remember getting for myself (well, cajoling my mother into buying for me) was an anthology of sci-fi short stories. The standout of the bunch being The Last Command by Keith Laumer.
In later elementary school I was all about the Greek and Roman mythos, The Oddyssey, American tall tales and frontier stories. Our teachers were a bit unusual in that they read stories to us during English class. The Pyramids trilogy was the series that most stood out for me.
In junior high, I moved onto military history and fiction. I became a dedicated warbirder and student of military hardware for quite a while.
Finally in HS I had the dubious good fortune of being in the only sessions ever offered for three different English courses – one dedicated to science fiction literature, one to horror and supernatural fiction and one to interpretting mass media. The year following the introduction of these classes, several members of our school board fell under the sway of a “Christian” evangelist preacher. This notable cocksucker (who was even foisted off on us during a school assembly – fucker called me a Satanist because I listened to the Beatles) managed to convince them that these sorts of classes weren’t sufficently “Christian” (even though we were a completely secular school) and thus inappropriate for our fragile young minds. It’s assholes like that that simply reinforced my then burgeoning distaste and distrust for organized religions. I later learned the teacher was himself a raging God botherer, so the irony of him introducing and losing those classes struck me funny.
geg6
In kindergarten and first grade, I used all my money to order books from Weekly Reader. I don’t remember which was the first book, but it was either “Champion Dog Prince Tom,” a true story about a runt puppy blonde cocker spaniel who won multiple titles in both obedience and field trials (a highly unusual feat to be excellent at both), or “The Pink Motel,” about a kid whose parents buy an old 50s-type motel in Florida and his adventures there with the denizens of the motel. In second grade, I was obsessed with “The Borrowers” and “The Boxcar Children.”. In third grade, my dad started my newest and probably most influential reading by getting me “Tom Sawyer” and “David Copperfield” for my birthday. They were beautifully bound in leather and gilt. Over the next couple of years, either buying on my own or receiving them as gifts from the parents, they got me complete collections of Dickens and Twain. I was reading quite early and I was voracious from the start. I loved everything about books and still do.
asiangrrlMN
Holy shit. First book? Was it one by Richard Scarey? Was it one of the Little House on the Prairie series? Was it War and Peace? OK, it wasn’t the last one because I read half of that in fifth grade, and I taught myself to read at age four. It might have been Pippi Longstocking or one of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Or maybe Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, or one of the Encyclopedia Brown series. I’m not sure, but thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Oooh, just saw geg6‘s response. I was obsessed with The Boxcar Children as well, but only the first book. And, I read The Borrowers pretty early on, too.
cat48
Jack and Alice Reader–Kindergarten long ago. “See Jack run.” “Run, Jack, run.”
Patrick Eagan
I’m sure it’s not the first book that I read but the earliest I can remember was Penrod by Booth Tarkington. Although it was published in 1916, I probably read it in the late 40’s. I also recall reading the follow-on Penrod and Sam.
Mum
Like Maykin, Libertini, and Yutsano, I was an early reader. Before I had my kids and started reading to them, I would have had a hard time recalling any books that were read to me or that I read before the age of six. But in reading to my kids, I started to recall having read things like “The Little Engine That Could” and other picture books. It was the books that I read after entering grade school that really made an impact on me, and I still reread many of them 50 years later: the Oz books, both Alice books, the Doctor Doolittle books, Uncle Remus, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” “Black Beauty,” Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books, “Huckleberry Finn,” “The Wind in the Willows,” and the Pooh books. But I think the book that really was an earth-shattering experience, so that I still remember how I felt when I turned the last page, was “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.
mai naem
All of Enid Blyton’s books. Anybody who grew up in a country with an British based school system knows Enid Blyton. For some reason her books are not popular here. She died in the 60s but is still the biggest selling childrens author in England. Her little kids books are fairy talish kind of books with fairies/goblins/elves etc. Then she has books aimed at 6 and up, kind of like Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys but better. Also, books based in Brit boarding schools. Some of her stuff is non PC – she had a character in one of the adventure series whose nickname is Fatty and her characters are all white and I believe she used the term Negro.The book I still remember crying buckets over was Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther. I can’t believe my teacher had this as an assigned book.
Chinn Romney
I devoured the Hardy Boys series. Don’t remember precisely which volume I read first, but I doubt it was actually the first one in the series. A little later I discovered my Dad’s stash of Playboys, but that’s a story for another day…
R-Jud
@Texpunk:
When I was three, mine would make me read the letters and numbers off license plates in parking lots and were pretty floored when I came out with: “New Hampshire: Live Free Or Die!” one day.
John O
The first one that wasn’t “learn how to read” was All Quiet on the Western Front.
tesslibrarian
My first picture book was one of my mother’s art major textbooks–I don’t recall if it was general or about Gauguin, but my first memory of opening a book is scenes from Tahiti and women dressed in red.
We were read the Little House books more than once; when I was learning to read, I would pick up those. Weekly Reader sales were the best–Morris the Moose, Bunnicula, Fudge (how I recall the books; as the oldest, I empathized with Peter). When I wanted to know where the alphabet came from, my mother read us a cleaned-up version of Kipling’s Just So Stories, which did not answer my question.
First chapter books I recall are biographies of Annie Sullivan and Juliette Gordon Low, while riding in the backseat on some sort of family trip or another. Reading was primarily an escape for enclosed spaces; otherwise, I was happy writing my own stories in my head.
The first non-assigned adult book that made an impression was Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. I was 14, had the flu, and it was the week after our basic skills tests had been turned into our parents. I’d sent my father to the newsstand for Duran Duran magazines; he brought home the book, said he’d read it in college, and if I was reading at high school graduate level, I could read that.
He was an ass, but I love Lewis’s social commentary now (everyone should read The Job and Ann Vickers), the era he describes is my favorite for research, and it helped make me the liberal I am today. Heh heh heh.
CynDee
@ruemara: Try touching Pride and Prejudice now; there are some notable zombie qualities in Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Collins, and above all, Lady Catherine; she is truly cringe-able. You wanna know how someone can handle a zombie without killing it, Elizabeth Bennet does the job for us all with Lady Catherine.
This is not a book for wimps, and if you are a scaredy-cat, it will teach you how to grow claws.
CynDee
First book I remember reading was “The Little Red Hen,” chosen by my mother. One of my earliest memories is her taking me to the library every Saturday morning.
The Little Red Hen asks a number of farm animals to help her plant a garden, care for it, and harvest the crop. At each stage the animals decline being a helper, so she says, “Then I will do it myself.”
At the end they all want to help her eat the food she has prepared from the garden, but she says, “No, I will eat it myself.” This story of determination and self-reliance was a great first book for any child, but especially a little girl in 1948. I will always thank my mother for it. She is 90 now, and still loves to read everything in sight.
Later, the original “Heidi” definitely set my taste for good literature, language, theme, variety, story, and tone. I just read it again this week.
In my adult life, anything by Winston Graham is a great read; he’s the writer I wish I could be. He has truly enriched my understanding of human nature, and is a fine, meticulous historian whose work illuminates the human condition in its cultural and personal setting.
cminus
Heh. My parents used to say the same thing when I was 2 and would “read” The Best Nest out loud.
(They reconsidered when I picked up the newspaper one morning at breakfast, looked at a headline, and said “Turks bomb Cyprus? That’s not nice!”)
Tommy
First Book: Homer Price
First Library Book: The Sea Around Us – Rachel Carson
Ben JB
There’s a lot that people have mentioned that I remember reading, but why is no one mentioning the animal stories of Jean Craighead George–Julie of the Wolves, My Side of the Mountain, Vulpes, the Red Fox, etc?
And I loved L’Engle, but Edith Nesbit was also amazing–Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet.
Also, I just looked up and found out the name of a book that really got my attention as a child–Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers Lionheart, which involves two brothers dying and leading an army in heaven. (When one of them dies there, he goes to an even more awesome heaven (is how I read it as a child).)
MikeN
Paddle to The Sea. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
phoebesmother
@KDP:
We must be about the same age. Love that Wiggily. And yes I also read those books about the childhoods of famous Americans (mostly). Remember a program (might just have applied to Ohio) called I think Reader’s Circle that involved a list of recommended grade-appropriate books? Couldn’t stand those books because NOTHING HAPPENED in them. Also got into a series of books about a boy named Augustus, a series on VIKINGS (arms getting lopped off in the Crusades and other bloody events), and all the Grimms’ and French fairy tales. Perhaps my favorite book later was Alice in Wonderland (stole it from the 4th grade library). Anybody remember a book called Half Magic by Edgar Eager or the series of books on the Borrowers, little people who lived between the floor boards and used our cast-offs for their domestic arrangements?
shell13m
Fox in Sox. Oh, how that book tormented me!
Persia
I remember reading a farm book out loud that I had probably memorized. No idea what the title was, but it was one of those cool dimensional board books.
Chronicles of Narnia and The Trumpet of the Swan I remember being pretty early. I too loved The Three Investigators– they’re apparently as big as the Hardy Boys in German, who knew? I too read Bunnicula and the Fudge books.
So many good books, and I’m discovering there are many, many more good ones out there. My daughter loves the little Scholastic sell sheets as much as I used to.
geg6
@phoebesmother:
See me here:
@geg6:
Original Lee
Either “The Elephant’s Child” by Kipling, or “The King’s Red Stilts” by Seuss. I was a very early reader, too, so it’s a bit blurry to remember. I think “The Little Engine That Could” is a contender, as well. I know “Go Dog Go” and “Hop and Pop” had to have been in the mix, but I don’t remember the experience of reading them. Oh, and Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka, and Snip, Snap, and Snur. There was one really nice one called “My Very Special Day” about a girl who gets up one morning and gets to do all the stuff that she thinks is really special. I can’t find it anywhere. And the Edith the Lonely Doll books.
My first chapter book was either one of the original Bobbsey Twins (maybe “at the Seaside,” where they have an accident in the horse-drawn carriage on the way to their uncle’s house), or “Black Beauty”. I had a lot of chapter books that my parents had read as children. There was a series with a set of Christian triplets who were not afraid to discuss their faith with bullies (I just googled them, and I’m pretty sure the author is Bertha B. Moore). The Boxcar Children and the Oz books and the Borrowers, check. The Black Stallion series, and Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys, check. But I also started reading Nero Wolfe when I was 8, and then binged out on Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh and Ellery Queen. Then Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery series. Then I believe Isaac Asimov.
My godmother was the town librarian, so she fed my voracious reading habit. I’m sure she kept in touch with my parents and steered me a little bit, too, but she was very subtle about it. I always got the new books she wanted me to read before they got put on the shelf.
Original Lee
@Persia: I loved The Three Investigators. My German teacher used the English translation side-by-side with the original to help show the differences in expression and how translation is not word-for-word.
Persia
@Original Lee: That’s awesome. I wish more people would understand that, and how rare and valuable a really good translation is.
Original Lee
@Ben JB: I loved those books, too. But I think they are rarely the books children read that hit them hard *first*. For instance, I don’t see any Eleanor Estes books mentioned here, and I loved them. The Five Little Peppers books were among my favorites. The Hall Family Chronicles – I definitely remember reading “The Diamond in the Window” over and over and over.
Original Lee
@Persia: My German teacher was pretty awesome. He also had the complete Asterix series in both French and German, and showed us how we could puzzle out what they were saying if we didn’t have a dictionary handy.
phoebesmother
To all the early readers on this thread: I have a theory that there are two basic reading strategies, one visual gestalt and the other phonetic code based. I wonder whether you early readers fall into the first or second type. To this day there are words I can read just fine but have never pronounced, because I can’t slow down enough to apply the phonetic code. And does early reading coincide with fast reading later in life? And what is the connection to aural skills used in music?
canuckistani
It might have been Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss, but I might have been reading that to my little sister at a later time. Otherwise, the How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs.
KDP
@phoebesmother: Ooo, I remember Half Magic, I loved that book. Wasn’t there a segment where he wishes for the beach and ends in the Saharan Desert?
I enjoyed ‘The Borrowers’ and the ‘color’ fairy book series too.
I did not get access to a real library until I was 12 and we moved to a town. We lived on a street that overlooked Turtle Creek and Wilmerding PA, and the nearest shopping was about a mile away. One of the major excitements of childhood was when we were allowed to walk the Greensburg Pike, past the twin drive-ins (now a Super Walmart) to the Great Valley Shopping Center. Ahh, what fond memories this discussion is providing.
Deb T
If you don’t count the Bobbsey Twins, Black Beauty and Nancy Drew (yes, I’m that old) and a lot of those pulp novels marketed for kids or all those book report books at school, the first adult novel I remember reading was Robinson Crusoe. I was in the 4th or 5th grade.
KDP
@phoebesmother: Oh, interesting. I was taught phonetically, but found later that it doesn’t always help. I remember feeling somewhat embarassed to find that ‘misled’ is pronounced as miss-led and now my-zled. I like, now, to maintain that they are hereronyms. That is, it is possible to mislead someone inadvertently based on how they perceive your words and deeds, but you misle someone deliberately and with malicious intent.
@Anne Laurie: Thanks, I was poking around the tubes last night trying to find the series. The book on Ernie Pyle has left me with a lifelong, and not yet fulfilled, desire to go to Four Corners. I know there isn’t anything there, I am just delighted by the thought that one can stand in four states simultaneously. I remember the Louisa May Alcott and Abigail Adams books too. Oh, and Dolly Madison. I believe that the portrayal of these women as strong and independent thinkers set the stage for my later perception of the role of women in society. Hmm, any first wave feminists involved in the authoring of these books?
What a sad commentary on our educational system that books written originally for 7-9 year olds are now offered as suitable for tweens.
KDP
@Deb T: The first adult book I read was “The Turquoise” by Anya Seton. I later read all of her novels. In most, her subjects were historical personages who are not well-known, but who observed or had some impact on events of the time. One of my favorite novels has remained “Katherine.” It’s a fictional account of the life of Katherine de Roet who was John of Gaunt’s mistress for many years, bearing him 5 children. Late in life, he married her and arranged for their children to be legitimized. The Tudor line descended from their daughter, Joan Beaufort.
asiangrrlMN
@cminus: My mom likes to tell the story of how, as a two-year old, I would frown and read the newspaper–upside down.
@phoebesmother: I am a gestalt person. I read pretty fast (about a hundred to two-hundred paperback pages per hour, depending), but I also skip over any description because I prefer to see the scenes in my own head. If I stumble across a word I don’t know, I look it up. I love words very much, so I am always pleased to find words I don’t know. Anyway, back to reading. I never sound anything out; I just ‘know’ a word.
pluky
Cyrano the Crow
licensed to kill time
I don’t remember the first book I read, but I do remember the exact moment I realized I could read. My parents read to us a lot, and I had books memorized – one day I was turning pages and chattering along and all of a sudden it was like the letters went into focus or something and I COULD READ! This was when I was 3 or 4.
I could cite all my favorite kid’s books but it would just be…oh, ALL of ’em, Charlie! ’cause I was/am a voracious reader. BTW, I remember getting a remark on my report card in the 4th grade that I read “too much fiction”.
I also remember my mom calling me for dinner one time and finding me in my bedroom sobbing over Charlotte’s Web. “Whuh whu whu WHY do spiders have to DIE?” Oh, the questions parents have to answer! (Another one was “Why did God let President Kennedy get shot?”)
So parents, READ TO YOUR KIDS!!
Jake the snake
“Oscar the Trained Seal” by Mabel Neikirk. I see where copies can be bought on the ‘tubez for $20 to $75 depending on the quality.
And Isaac Asimov’s “The Martian Way and Other Stories.
Libertini
@Yutsano: I only went to private school so that I could start at age 5. Public school would not accept me till age 6. First grade was at a Christian school, fundamentalist Assembly of God, which we were. Once I passed first grade, public school could not refuse my transfer, so I was good to go in the public system.
Grandmère Mimi
Raggedy Ann and Andy in the Deep, Deep Woods. I was about 7 years old according to the date of the inscription in my copy of the book, which I still have.