Ask Lemmy

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

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I remember correctly is the first novel I remember reading. When we were kids, our parents bought us kid-friendly versions of the novels. I don't really remember anymore if they were condensed versions, or just the same length but with a couple of pictures added per chapter.

It.

I read most of Dan Brown's books as a child and I really liked The Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, but the one that marked me the most in my prepubescent years was probably Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho.

Maniac Magee. I read it again recently and it really holds up well.

It’s basically a book about racism. This orphan kid doesn’t understand why this town is segregated, so he keeps going on the black side of town even though he’s white. He makes friends with all the kids and eventually the adults start to understand they’re not so different. The ending isn’t unrealistic, like the town immediately desegregating or something, but it’s very charming. It’s the little impact that one kid can have on the town that leaves a lasting impression.

I legitimately cried as an adult at one point in the book, because it has a way of getting you so invested in the characters, and I won’t spoil it but something happens to one of the characters. It hits hard.

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.

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.

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 Black Cauldron Series.

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 hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

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

Redwall by Brian Jacques was probably the earliest one I remember loving.

The Phantom Toll Booth!

Weren't they making a live action movie of that? I swear I saw a teaser trailer for it like almost a whole decade ago but don't remember the movie ever actually coming out.

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.

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

Theres A Monster At the End of This Book

Fox in Socks, Dr Seuss.

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

Before that, Zoobooks obviously

Can't remember which came first, but it was either The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley or The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander.

The Hobbit.

First "real" book I read at like 10 or 11 and I just went straight the the whole series after.

Hatchet

Star wars bane books and Kevin Mitnik's ghost in the wires. I couldn't put them down.

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.

Soup & Me

The Magician's Nephew

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen hit me at the right time as a kid.

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

The Paul Street Boys. I still remember it fondly!

I never read a book outside of school (which was all fiction books, which I never got into), and then I was gifted Zygmunt Bauman's Globalization: The Human Consequences and loved it and realized non-fiction is a thing

The Magician's Nephew
this was my first introduction to the concept of multiple realities and it blew my little 7 year old mind

Cujo

I got really stuck into the Artemis Foul books as a teen. I always thought they'd make a great TV series.

Idk about "loved," but I'll put "I can fly" since I remember reading it a lot.

In case others don't know it, it goes a little something like this (each line is a page):

"I can fly

Up, up, up

Down, down, down

Up, up, up

Down, down, down

Up, up, up

Down, down, down

I can fly"

Probably a Hardy Boys book, I used to devour those as a pre-teen.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Watership Down