Ask Lemmy

Something by Robert Munsch

Schott's Original Miscellany. I was a strange third grader, and I'm happy to report that I have grown stranger since.

Inkheart was the book that got me to love reading.And the ironic part is, the audio book book is not available anymore (think its because each chapter starts with an experpt from another book, so rights issues come into play) so now Im searching everywhere for real life Inkheart similar to the characters looking for fictional Inkheart.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

I was 11 when the book came out, so I was the perfect demographic for it. That book played such a pivotal role in my life at that age. I remember being excited for the next books and waiting for their releases.

I’m 41 now and I still will pick up any book by Pullman and read it. He is my very first favorite author.

Jurassic Park

I see many of my favorites, so I’ll throw down the first book I really remember loving as a kid because it is so touching:

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

The Book Thief

As a small child: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

As a teen: Lightning by Dean R. Koontz

As a high-schooler: Island by Aldous Huxley

Chicken Soup for the Soul

An English book of short stories.

There was a YA book called The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray that I remember really capturing my imagination when I was 10 or 11. I think I must have read Eragon around that time too and really enjoyed it.

I think I started diving into the Discworld series shortly after that.

It's a toss up between Crispin and House of the Scorpion.. I read them back to back and they defined everything I liked going forward

Where Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I read that book over and over wore out two copies. Funny I went from that to The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I did the same with that book. I also would check out any Hank the Cowdog books that our school library had.

Truly tough question. Because as a kid I feel in love with any book I picked up and read. To me books are magical. You can get lost in a world and become part of it.

As a kid, the first book that really got me hooked was Ender's Game.

Another one around the same time was Raptor Red.

Nothing too crazy, I was a kid after all.

Richard Scarry’s "What do people do all day" is such a fun book that even now I wish I had again just to flip through the pages and see the intricacies of the drawings

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

Edit: by Douglas Adams (yeah, like that addition was needed)

Almost any Golden Book (Pokey Little Puppy) or

My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George),

Paddington Bear books.

Along with titles others have mentioned (Scarry, etc.). These are firsts

The wizard of the Emerald City by Alexander Volkov

Redwall, by Brian Jacques I think. Basically medieval fantasy drama but with woodland animals if I remember properly. I loved the whole series, great books when I was a kid.

The Planet of Adventure series (it came as a single book) by Jack Vance.
It was more of an adventure book than sci-fi. Light on the science but amazingly descriptive with the details of its world building. It was the first time I could read a book and really experience it like I was there. I dug it out of my dad’s sci-fi collection when I was about 11 I think. It was a Dutch translation and came with a separate map. I loved that map so much, you could follow the journey and fantasize about all those other parts that weren’t mentioned in the book.

So yea, it’s the book that opened a whole realm of imagination for me.

Theres A Monster At the End of This Book

The King, by Dick Bruna. I can still recite it by heart 53 years later.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (because it was read to me)

Pirate's Promise (first full book I read on my own)

Something by Brian Jacques when I was ten. Probably Long Patrol or Mossflower. turned me from a book hater into a book fiend. Like, literally pissed off my parents because I would read at night instead of sleeping.

The first of the Dragonlance books. I loved that trilogy so much as a kid. With Raistlin and Caramon, Tika, and Riverwind, Goldmoon... Thirty years later I still remember it.

The Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time series. There were other books I really liked prior to that, but I distinctly remember reading that one on a long road trip I was stuck on with my parents, and being just completely enthralled by it. Made a 14 hour car ride feel like nothing.

The series ultimately led to discovering Brandon Sanderson as an author (when he took over for the last 3 books in the series), which led to a lot more really memorable, beloved reads, so that's a nice added bonus.

Hitchhikers Guide, my mom got me to read it really young. I was maybe 8.

Before that, Zoobooks obviously

A Wrinkle in Time.

Picking just one book is really unfair as I fell in love with various books at different times of my life.

But to answer your question, the very first book I remember falling in love with as a little kid is... two books. Jules Verne 'Michel Strogoff', and Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' which I read in French back then as 'Le monde perdu'.

But I insist, this is absolutely unfair to the many other books I've loved and still love to this very day :p

Redwall by Brian Jacques. Introduced me to so many things like the fantasy genre, multi-book series, deep worldbuilding, archetypal races and probably way more. The food descriptions also stand out in my memory.

Haven't gone back to see how it stands up but I highly recommend it for kids whose reading level is improving and want to move up a tier in length/difficulty.

The cat was a bit of an asshole, but figured out how to fit in.

When I was very young, 10 or under, there was a book I read that I remember almost nothing about, just that there was a kid who found or built a bunch of robots to do various things. The only robot I really remember is the one made to row a boat, named (appropriately) Row-bot. It had a bell built in that would ring every time it made a stroke. At the end of the book all the robots have to leave the boy, and the last scene is him watching them rowing away and hearing the bell fade into the mist. That I even remember any of the book tells me I really liked it.

Besides that, I was gifted a copy of Ender's Game for my 15th or 16th birthday. I really loved it and it was the first time I can remember being really blown away by a plot twist.

Edit: The first book may be Andy Buckram's Tin Men.

The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O Shea. Pure Irish fantasy set in real locations I know in Ireland.

House of the Scorpion. Pleasantly surprised to look it up and see it has pretty good ratings

Old Man and the Sea, the first reading assignment I actually enjoyed. Sure it took 5 years after being weaned off of picture books to seriously get into reading, but hey I'm thankful because there's no adventure quite like the kind that comes from a good book.

The Black Cauldron Series.

Hatchet

The 1982 version of "The Amazing Adventures of Hercules". They re-released it in I think 2004, but butchered it.