When I was about seven years old I begged my parents to buy me a book. It was a small one about six inches wide and five inches tall dilled with tiny print and photographs of WWII aircraft. It was pretty darned comprehensive, containing specifications of the aircraft and histories on each. My parents thought it was too ‘grown up’ for me, but I amazed them by being able to tell them just about anything they wanted to know about most of the aircraft.
I started reading Poe at age eight, after I came upon a quotation from The Conqueror Worm in a comic book.
I’m not sure what the first book that was not of the ‘See Spot Run’ variety, but I think it was Snow Treasure, about Norwegian children protecting their town’s gold supply from the Germans in WWII. I read that one in about grade three.
I learned to read at an embarrasingly young age, and the first book I recall reading was The Fellowship of the Ring. I didn’t read it again for another twenty years or so.
I think for most of us these are two different things, which would explain the wide range of answers you’re getting. I’m not sure which you really want to know, myself.
Very first fiction: Harold and The Purple Crayon was the first book I could read all the way through all by myself(!). Age 4
First book with chapters: I’m not counting those short early-reader “chapter books” like Amelia Bedelia, which are just picture books broken into chapters… My mom introduced me to Pippy Longstocking when I was in first grade. Age 6.
First adult novel: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. Age 10. I’d begin reading everything I could get my hands on by Stephen King the next year…
I remember reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before I finished 1st grade. In the year following that I think I read every one of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. Other favorite writers I read before I discovered science fiction at age 8 were E.B. White and Judy Blume.
I don’t remember the first “real book” I ever read – I’m just too old – but the first “real book” I remember reading is The Box Car Children.
Like jayjay, I read the Oz books at a young age. I remember that the librarian had to get them off the shelf for me, I was too short.
My first “adult” books were by Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming.
Not in the OP, but the first book report I remember doing in grade school was SF, The Ant Men, which coincided nicely with the movie Them!, released in 1954.
In addition to the Oz books, I remember reading Thornton Burgess’ *Old Mother Westwind, with all the little anthropomorphic animals having little kid adventures.
My dad started to teach me to read when I was 2 1/2. My father was diagnosed with a brain tumor and lost his ability to read when I was 6 so I would sit by his bed and read him his Zane Grey books.
The first novel I remember reading was called Invaders From Rigel, I can’t remember the author. I liked it so much ( at that age ) that I grabbed the next sci fi book from my Mom’s collection - Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness. I read the Invaders book in a day; Zelazny’s book took . . . somewhat longer. Several months longer, as it happens; it was quite a jump. I’d forgotten the start before I finished it, in fact. Great book, by the way.
I read Pat Conroy and John Irving when I was about eleven, certainly not my first books, but those two are authors designed to scar a young mind. Man, I still love Hotel New Hampshire.
-Lil
The first “real” book I consciously remember reading was A Wrinkle In Time, when I was five. But that was mostly out-loud reading with my mother and my older sister.
Granted, at the same age I was also reading stuff like Max the Taxi Dog and other sub-age-approrpriate books, because that was all we were given in school.
My mum claims I could read at 2 two and a half. What her definition of reading is, I’m not sure. Probably some limited word recognition in Ladybird books.
I know that I read ‘A Child’s Bible’ at the age of four (strange choice considering my parents are atheist/strong agnostic) and was definitely devouring Enid Blyton ‘Secret Seven’ books by the age of five.
I would have been quite young when I read my first full length book. Some of my early memories are of reading Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories”, and it may very well have been the first novel I read. I would have been about five or six, I’d say. I’m thinking the book had both the Jungle Book, and Just So Stories in it. One of the earliest “actual” books I was given was The Blue Fairy Book, I believe I was eight when that was given me, along with Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. (The Kipling was my father’s book.) I was reading Issac Asimov’s “I, Robot” at about age 9.5, but also age appropriate stuff like Nancy Drew, Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Freckles, Beautiful Joe, The Heidi series, Little Women, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Tom Sawyer, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I was given Pride and Prejudice for my tenth birthday, but for some reason I didn’t like it much until later, and I read A Rose in Bloom that year. Each year for my birthday I got at least one good book, often several, sometimes hardcover.
The first “real book” - i.e., books written for adults, was Walter M. Lords’ A Night to Remember. I was 6.
The first “real book” that was fiction (as dictated by the OP, though ANTR wasn’t used as a “reference”) was The Seven Science Fiction Novels of H. G. Wells. I was 7.
I’m certain I was reading other books long before, but the one I remember most was *Island of the Blue Dolphins *by Scott O’Dell. I read it when I was 8 and in 3rd grade. My first adult novel was when I was in 5th grade. I was spending a boring vacation with my grandma, it was raining, so I looked through the bookshelf. I pulled out The Scarlett Letter and read it cover to cover that weekend. Whew. Of course, I had to ask Grandma to explain a few things.
