For picture books, my first that I can remember was probably The Monster at the End of This Book. Though it can’t have been the first overall, since it wouldn’t make sense to someone who didn’t already love books.
For my first “real” book, without pictures (except maybe one at the start of each chapter), it’d be Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. My mom was reading it, and left it in the bathroom, until one day it disappeared… and she started getting daily updates from me on what those rodents were doing. I was about 5 or 6 years old.
The Mushroom Planet books the OP mentioned, and the Danny Dunn books, were also early favorites of mine, but they were a bit after. And I think I had The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe completely memorized before I even learned to read, from Mom reading it to us.
Judging from the covers, I’d say Holden’s book. I vaguely remember a chapter about the Komodo dragon too. And yes, I recognize that picture of the bathyscaphe!
My earlier post mentioned a couple of children’s books but if we’re talking about “regular” books my memory is a lot less clear. I know I read such a book in third grade (age 8-9). It was a collection of ghost stories. One of them was “Taily-po.” My best guess is that was not the first real book I read but I don’t recall one from earlier.
In third and fourth grade I was reading every Goosebumps story by R.L. Stine I could get my hands on.
Prior to that I know I was into the Eyewitness Books by DK and my aunt bought me a subscription to Kids Discover magazine. Those were comparatively light on words though.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the first actual novel I ever read was Heinlein’s Red Planet, which I remain nostalgically fond of all these many decades later. Me and my folks had just moved from NYC to SF in the summer between my 2nd and 3rd grade years and my parents were on the verge of splitting up for good. I was idly looking at the covers of pulp novels in a newsstand rack and my father, noticing what I was doing, picked it out for me and let me pick out one for myself.
My own choice was Michael Moorcock’s The Runestaff, which I chose based on the lurid cover. That was the second actual novel I read and by sheer luck it wasn’t bad at all, I have some nostalgic fondness for it as well. Though I was unlucky enough that it was the middle book in a series.
Reading the Wikipedia page on the Trieste didn’t ring any bells, but I did learn about the substance they used for buoyancy and how much they needed to use. There were more than 14 kilogallons of gasoline in a fully pressurized diver.
I probably read a picture book or something first, but I definitely read Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner over and over, and my one real memory of not being able to read fluently involves a line from The House at Pooh Corner,** so I’ll go with that one.
** “I’m face downwards under something, and that, Piglet, is a very bad position for looking at ceilings.” I have a very vivid memory of being baffled by the second part of this sentence (and that Piglet is a very bad person for looking at sellings? cereals?); apparently, I hadn’t really learned about punctuation yet.
“I Married Adventure” by Osa Johnson, when I was eleven. Then there was a four or five year gap until I read “Mutiny on the Bounty” followed by “Men Against the Sea” and “Pitcairn’s Island” and then all of Jules Verne and it never stopped after that.
“I Married Adventure” went to my middle daughter when she was eleven and she still has it.
Fun factoid: She translated Zamyatin’s We, which one of my high school English teachers discussed with me (revealing that she was his aunt). Twilight Zone report: I just wrote to him an hour ago, before I got on SDMB
I was into airplanes when I was young. I remember checking out this book from my school library in first grade. Also, dispelling the common notion that boys would not read a book with a girl protagonist.
The first book of any kind? Go, Dog, Go!, by P.D. Eastman. I insisted that my parents read it to me every night, and it was the first book that I was able to read by myself (at around age 4), though I wonder how much of that was me simply memorizing what my parents had read to me. I was a precocious reader, and by kindergarten, my reading skills were well above the rest of my class.
The first non-picture book? Probably Henry Huggins, by Beverly Cleary; I would have been around age 7 or 8 when I first read it.
The first “adult” book? Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. My mom had a copy, and it was kind of a cultural phenomenon in the early 1970s. I read it when I was 8 or 9, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand much of it.
The first book I remember reading on my own was “Here’s A Penny” by Carolyn Haywood, first in a series I think, about a boy with copper-colored hair who went by the nickname “Penny” (which seems odd to me now). I read it in 2nd grade.
I couldn’t name the first children’s book I read (Roy Chapman Andrews “All About” series; Spin & Marty, Nancy Drew type stuff) - But the first adult book I ever read (at age ten or so) was either Jim Corbett’s Maneaters of Kumaon or HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds. Probably the Corbett.
I just remembered we owned these Disney books, which I assume were retellings and simplifications of classic fairy tales. Lavishly illustrated, I don’t remember actually reading the text, but I think I must have.
I can remember the first actual book I read from cover to cover very clearly - it was Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. It was towards the end of 1st Grade, so I was slightly younger than 7 years old. I binged most of Dahl’s children’s books* around that time, but Danny was the first.
** At least, those that existed - I never did read the BFG or Witches, which came out when I was older.
The very first book I remember reading to myself - or, rather, reading to my sister on a car trip - was a book version of Disney’s Robin Hood; the film with Robin and Maid Marian as foxes, Little John as a bear, King John as an evil lion, and the delightfully evil Sir Hiss, the snake.
Non-picture books, I’m not sure which I read first. But my earliest memories include Little Men and Jo’s Boys, which lead me to attempt my first “big book” - Little Women. I also know I read Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, which seems odd - I don’t remember ever reading any of his more famous works like Around the World in Eighty Days or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Not sure how I picked that one - maybe it was the only thing the library had available.
I was a precocious reader, and by kindergarten, my reading skills were well above the rest of my class.
