Reading as a Child:

[paddoboy]

What were the first books you can remember reading as a Kid?
Me? When very young [about 4 or 5 years?] a book on Rudolph and Santa, and the usual fairy tales, at 6 or 7 years vividly remember ...Enid Blyton's Faraway tree books......
10 to about 14 or 15 years...... H.M Ballyntine's "Coral Island" R L Stevenson's Treasure Island.....Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckelberry Finn", Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe....probably a few more also. My favourite? Coral Island!! a story about some young boys wrecked on a deserted Pacific Island.

 

[Michael 345]

What were the first books you can remember reading as a Kid?
Me? When very young [about 4 or 5 years?] a book on Rudolph and Santa, and the usual fairy tales, at 6 or 7 years vividly remember ...Enid Blyton's Faraway tree books......
10 to about 14 or 15 years...... H.M Ballyntine's "Coral Island" R L Stevenson's Treasure Island.....Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckelberry Finn", Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe....probably a few more also. My favourite? Coral Island!! a story about some young boys wrecked on a deserted Pacific Island.

Not so much books but comics

Tales from the Crypt one I remember

Especially someone hanging upside down with a spigot tap in neck for the toothless vampires

 

[paddoboy]

Not so much books but comics

Tales from the Crypt one I remember

Especially someone hanging upside down with a spigot tap in neck for the toothless vampires

Of course comics also were on the list..Superman, Batman, The Phantom, Ginger Meggs

 

[Dywyddyr]

I remember reading Winnie the Pooh (and falling of my chair laughing).
I also read the family set of encyclopaedias while going through a lengthy illness (about 5 years old).

 

[Seattle]

Someone gave me a book "Graveyard of the Atlantic" when I was about 6. Before that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and illustrated kids books even earlier than that.

I got my first public library card when I was 6.

 

[paddoboy]

I remember reading Winnie the Pooh (and falling of my chair laughing).
I also read the family set of encyclopaedias while going through a lengthy illness (about 5 years old).

Got my first set of encyclopedias at about the age of 12, Merit Student Encyclopedias, and year books for 5 years, which were needed then with so much change.

 

[Seattle]

Got my first set of encyclopedias at about the age of 12, Merit Student Encyclopedias, and year books for 5 years, which were needed then with so much change.

Ours were called World Book Encyclopedias with the annual year books.

 

[paddoboy]

Ours were called World Book Encyclopedias with the annual year books.

Incredible how quickly out dated they became.

 

[Seattle]

Incredible how quickly out dated they became.

The thing I remembered about them, you could look up anything (that a kid might be interested in) but you could never get much detail since one or two pages was all that even the longest article had available. So you could never just sit there and read about something really interesting.

 

[paddoboy]

The thing I remembered about them, you could look up anything (that a kid might be interested in) but you could never get much detail since one or two pages was all that even the longest article had available. So you could never just sit there and read about something really interesting.

They certainly served a good purpose and did a job for us old buggers..

 

[Janus58]

The first "real"( not a picture book) book I read was one of the The Happy Hollisters series.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happy_Hollisters
We got them as a subscription (you got a book sent to you on a regular basis) When we first starting getting them, they were beyond my reading level, and Mom used to read us a chapter every night before bed.
I don't remember exactly when I did it, But I do remember reading the first one on my own and that it was the first "chapter book" I had read. We ended up with most of the series, but not all of them.

 

[paddoboy]

What were the first books you can remember reading as a Kid?
Me? When very young [about 4 or 5 years?] a book on Rudolph and Santa, and the usual fairy tales, at 6 or 7 years vividly remember ...Enid Blyton's Faraway tree books......
10 to about 14 or 15 years...... H.M Ballyntine's "Coral Island" R L Stevenson's Treasure Island.....Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckelberry Finn", Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe....probably a few more also. My favourite? Coral Island!! a story about some young boys wrecked on a deserted Pacific Island.

Rather ironic, that I enjoyed the "Coral Island" more then the more recognised classic Robinson Crusoe...probable reasons, I was younger and had an active mind longing for adventure...it was a group of young boys interacting with drama related stuff that had visited the Island, native Polynesians, and the warring between them and cannabilism and how they rescued captives that were to be dined on....run in with pirates also was also on the menu. Great yarn!!

 

[Janus58]

Rather ironic, that I enjoyed the "Coral Island" more then the more recognised classic Robinson Crusoe...probable reasons, I was younger and had an active mind longing for adventure...it was a group of young boys interacting with drama related stuff that had visited the Island, native Polynesians, and the warring between them and cannabilism and how they rescued captives that were to be dined on....run in with pirates also was also on the menu. Great yarn!!

Another collection of books we had when we were young was "Junior Classics for Young Readers". It included such titles as the the above Robinson Crusoe, along with Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Swiss Family Robinson, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Doctor Dolittle, and Gulliver's Travels*

* This one was quite abridged, only covering the more familiar Lilliput story. Years later, I read the full version which involves four separate sea voyages taken by Capt. Gulliver.

 

[foghorn]

I don't remember the first book I read, but I remember reading and enjoying two books from 'The Chronicles of Narnia' series. C. S. Lewis
'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' and 'The silver Chair'.

I think it was the character 'Puddleglum' in the the Silver Chair that made me laugh. Don't know why I never read the others in the seriers.

 

[paddoboy]

Another collection of books we had when we were young was "Junior Classics for Young Readers". It included such titles as the the above Robinson Crusoe, along with Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Swiss Family Robinson, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Doctor Dolittle, and Gulliver's Travels*

* This one was quite abridged, only covering the more familiar Lilliput story. Years later, I read the full version which involves four separate sea voyages taken by Capt. Gulliver.

Yeah read "Swiss family Robinson"
Not sure, but I was really taken in by ship wrecks on deserted Pacific Islands type books!
Might explain why much later in life at the age of 29 years, I undertook assisting to crew a three masted Barquentine from Cristabol [Panama] through the canal and a 4 month trip across the Pacific, one of our magnificent stops being the Galapagos Islands.

 

[paddoboy]

Yeah read "Swiss family Robinson"
Not sure, but I was really taken in by ship wrecks on deserted Pacific Islands type books!
Might explain why much later in life at the age of 29 years, I undertook assisting to crew a three masted Barquentine from Cristabol [Panama] through the canal and a 4 month trip across the Pacific, one of our magnificent stops being the Galapagos Islands.

The Square rigged Barquentine Eolus from Portsmouth sailed into Sydney Harbour today after leaving England on 24th Dec 73.

 

[sideshowbob]

We read the Babar books and later Freddy the Pig. I remember on book about a Big Cheese that got away from its owner who was rolling it to market; there was a flat pig that it ran over....

The book I have read most often is Treasure Island - probably twenty times or so in the past sixty years or so.

 

[Dennis Tate]

What were the first books you can remember reading as a Kid?
Me? When very young [about 4 or 5 years?] a book on Rudolph and Santa, and the usual fairy tales, at 6 or 7 years vividly remember ...Enid Blyton's Faraway tree books......
10 to about 14 or 15 years...... H.M Ballyntine's "Coral Island" R L Stevenson's Treasure Island.....Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckelberry Finn", Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe....probably a few more also. My favourite? Coral Island!! a story about some young boys wrecked on a deserted Pacific Island.

I read lots and lots of comic books first then The Hardy Boys but once I got into The Destroyer by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy...... I was done with Joe and Frank!

Sapir and Murphy, in my opinion, are two of the funniest writers who ever lived......
but many would not agree!

 

[Seattle]

There was also a series about "Henry Higgins" that I remember.

 

[RainbowSingularity]

They certainly served a good purpose and did a job for us old buggers..

the value of core concepts of knowledge allow themselves to be the building blocks for greater knowledge
unlike common celebrity trend concepts which is all about wants & desires and moving people as dumb sheep groups to dump their cash under a religious name or consumer name using paid training models or celebrity endorses brand culture.

real knowledge is quite different to all that crap

i wonder how many modern adults can define what "scientific method" means 10% ?

part of the self extinction process is computers taking on more and more thinking to ensure users are dumber and dumber
while opulence elitism is awarded the leverage of liberty of education through a false economic consumer market(it is for sale so it must be freely available and of relative value to truth)