Probably the earliest I remember are some of The Famous 5 stories (I think we had a 4-story omnibus - but they were all the same - young kids go camping on their own and accidentally pitch the tent either right next to, around the corner from or in one case right on top of a smuggler’s secret cave entrance). Suitable for 8-year olds only.
The first novel I think I absolutley loved was The Phantom Tollbooth - I enjoyed the logic word games in it. I still have a copy and still occasionally indulge (How do you get the Island of Conclusions? You jump, of course…)
I read and loved lots of Nancy Drew and other kid fiction my parents brought home, but the first book I found at the library myself, read, loved and made me want to read everything else the author wrote was Magic or Not?, by Edward Eager.
The first book I found in the library that made an impact, that no one else knew I had read, the first book that was mine, was one I found in the elementary school library about prisoners in tiger cages in a jungle war. I can’t recall the title and only remember a few of the details, but it challenged me. I felt a little illicit thrill at the maturity of the subject matter and at the same time I was proud of the fact I understood it. I felt that I had reached some sort of milestone that adult things were becoming important to me.
My parents bought us cheap books. I used to put The Three Bears up on top of the dresser next to my crib so I could read it at night.
I got myself another copy for the nostalgia.
I don’t remember the first I loved, but I remember the penny dropping on authors. I realized that if I tried another book with the same name on it, it might be a good choice!
I loved his books because they seemed like old friends when I started them. "Oh! yesssss, I know where this is going…but it’s changing here…but it’s still good, just a bit spicier, more tangy…ahhhh.
*The Three Investigators and the Mystery of the Green Ghost *- around 4th grade. I don’t remember reading much before that (though I’m certain I did, nothing made a huge impression on me). The Three Investigators books became favorites and I haunted the libraries (both school and town) to find more.
*Flowers for Algernon *- around the same time. Our fourth, fifth and sixth grade combined class had a small library of its own in addition to the school library, and some of the stuff there was not your standard kid fare (for example, they also had Sybil). I loved this from the first time I read it. It might have been an abridged version, because I don’t remember the sex parts in it. Everything else was there, though.
It’s much harder to get back once you have jumped…
It is hard to put my finger on specifics, there were so many - I was an independent reader from a young age, but:
Charlotte’s Web - I recently reread this. I cried. I’m not ashamed.
The above mentioned The Phantom Tollbooth. I will reread that anytime.
Arthur C Clarke short stories and novels Tales from the White Hart, The City and the Stars, other collections.
The Narnia books - I still have the collection and they are good for a quiet afternoon.
At intermediate (age 10/11) we were given an extract from Les Miserables to read - when Val Jean meets the Bishop. It was profoundly affecting, and I (somewhat later) went on to read the entire book - tough work, but worth it. I’ll probably revisit it sometime soon.
There may have been one before it, but the earliest book I can remember reading on my own and enjoying was one from the Lucky Book Club called The Shark In Charlie’s Window by Keo Felker Lazarus. I think I was 9 years old.
Before that I mostly read picture books. I taught myself to read at age 4, but generally didn’t venture into reading for pleasure at all as a kid, I was more art oriented and enjoyed the pictures more than the text.
I can’t think of any traditional classics that I read. Most of the ones I’m familiar with (generally Roald Dahl) were read to us by the Teacher.
Probably one of the Adventure series by Willard Price. The school library had them and both my brother and I read them all. Well, all that had been published at the time.
I did read a lot of science fiction until I was about 13 or 14, but I think the Price books came first. Although I greatly enjoyed them I don’t seem to have read any after I went to high school. I guess that school library didn’t get the later stories.
The first novel I remember reading on my own and liking as a child was a thriller called The Blue Man by Kin Platt. I would love to re-read it and try to see how it holds up, but it’s been out of print for a long time and a used copy is prohibitively expensive.
*The Wind in The Willows *- I must have been around 7, because it was before I read *The Hobbit *and I was definitely 7 for that.
I still love it, and re-read it often. In fact, it engendered a love for the bucolic Merrye Englande trope it’s taken me a lifetime to excise, and I’m still not 100% fixed yet. Miéville and Moorcock help…
First non children’s book (i.e. a novel) that I read was Piers Anthony Xanth series book one (don’t recall exact name but do remember many characters).
I was in 5th grade and loved it. Continued to read the series through the middle of high school until I realized how silly they were.
OH, gosh, I combed the libraries and discovered and read hundreds of books on my own in elementary school, but trying to figure out which came first? The first one I loved, in second grade, was introduced by a teacher, so it doesn’t count to the OP, but I’ll mention it anyway, since I took it out of the library myself and read it over and over. The Good Master, by Kate Seredy, set on a vast ranch in Hungary just before WWI. I loved it for the horses, the humanity, the peek into the traditions of different, long gone culture, gypsies, and great illustrations. I still love it.
I loved Little Women, Twilight Zone anthologies, the Rick Brant kids’ series that involved scientists and adventures, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, Have Spacesuit will Travel, Red Planet, The Hound of the Baskervilles. **The Mysterious Island **and Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne, and When Worlds Collide. Lots of 1950’s SF anthologies, Heinlein, Ted Sturgeon. Ray Bradbury. Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, too, which had, along with mysteries, some stories of the uncanny or supernatural. I was 10 before I discovered A Wrinkle in Time, but I loved it, too.
I still love Little Women, a lot of those Twilight Zone stories, and Hound of the Baskervilles A Wrinkle in Time. I still love The Good Master. Developed a love of SFF and mysteries and myth and folklore in those early years that has lasted forever after, and prepared me for the biggest book love of my life, The Lord of the Rings, which I didn’t discover until Junior High.
The very first book I can remember picking out and reading all by myself was Harold and The Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. I was in the single digits, agewise. The first novel I read was Little Women, when I was 12. I’ve read it over and over through the years.
When I was a kid, my grandma took me to the library every week and I’d pick up anything that might have magic or ghosts in it, such as Witches, Ghosts, and Goblins, the Dorrie the Little Witch series, and of course, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. A particular favorite, which I checked out again and again, was Robert Arthur’s Ghosts and More Ghosts. One of the first threads I started here reunited me with this book (I could never remember the title because it was so generic). I say these books all kick ass (okay, maybe not Dorrie).
My grandma was always religious and regarded all this supernatural stuff with misgiving, but allowed me to check it out anyway.
I loved the Nancy Drew books too, but came in time to understand that the ghosty ones always turned out like Scooby Doo (i.e., they’d pull the mask off the old caretaker at the end). Bummer.
So your definition of “read on your own” means “not read aloud to you”?
I really don’t remember being read to very much at all; I was able to read fairly early and English was not my “home language” growing up. I do remembering picking up “Where The Wild Things Are” in some Pre-K kind of room when I was 4 or 5, not having recognized it and liking it. I also remember finding and reading “The Monster At The End Of This Book” in a Woolworth’s or something, and pestering my mom to buy it for me. (I was a wandering-off kind of kid, so when my mom took me shopping she eventually discovered her optimum strategy to avoid spending 30 minutes or more looking for me at some point was to drop me off in the book section and come back to get me later, 'cause I’d still be there.)
I read a lot of other people’s favorites “on my own” as well in 3rd/4th grades - Encyclopedia Brown (which quality I found very spotty even as a child), The Phantom Tollbooth, Charlotte’s Web, A Wrinkle In Time, The Hobbit, The Narnia series, etc. (though I read those later, like in 5th grade, only discovering them after a TV animated adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe aired - I’d never heard of them before). I still love all of them.
In fact rather than make this thread about “what are some of your favorite books from childhood and do you still like them”, which seems destined to get a lot of commonality, it might be shorter to remark on books you ONCE liked as a kid or young adult (to the point of re-reading multiple times) but NO LONGER enjoy re-reading. But I’ll let Skald start a separate thread on that if he deems that a derailing of this one.
One of the nuns at the Catholic school I attended in second grade suggested L’Engle to me, and I devoured it. It was my first exposure to anything you might call fantasy or science fiction, and I have never stopped loving the genre.
I re-read Wrinkle in Time to my kids for a bedtime story not long ago and I think it holds up pretty well.
I have no recollection whatsoever of the first book I read. Could easily have been a “Dick and Jane” book - you don’t think they were true do you? I am sure that what I would think today of whatever book it was is that it is a childrens book.
I should add that, once my Dad saw me reading Encyclopedia Brown stories, he said, “You like mysteries? Here- read this instead.” And he started me on Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and G.K. Chesterton.
He didn’t have much use for kiddie lit (except for a handful of classics like The WInd in the Willows), and thought kids were better off reading adult literature as soon as possible.
I actually re-read “A Wrinkle in Time” recently (last couple of years). I first read it when it was relatively newly published and as I recall very hot in the market (that is to say my school), with copies eagerly awaited as they passed hand to hand. I think I was in 4th grade at the time, but it may have been later.
Having just read it again in my fifties, I am certain I could not have read this book when I was 6 years old, that is to say in the second grade. Scholastic Books suggest this book for 11-13 year olds, Amazon 10 year olds with a 6th grade reading level (which seems to me very unlikely these days, since almost no one starts school at 4 anymore).
