Jurassic Park

There was a YA book called The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray that I remember really capturing my imagination when I was 10 or 11. I think I must have read Eragon around that time too and really enjoyed it.

I think I started diving into the Discworld series shortly after that.

It’s a toss up between Crispin and House of the Scorpion… I read them back to back and they defined everything I liked going forward

The Book Thief

As a small child: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

As a teen: Lightning by Dean R. Koontz

As a high-schooler: Island by Aldous Huxley

Where Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I read that book over and over wore out two copies. Funny I went from that to The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I did the same with that book. I also would check out any Hank the Cowdog books that our school library had.

Truly tough question. Because as a kid I feel in love with any book I picked up and read. To me books are magical. You can get lost in a world and become part of it.

As a kid, the first book that really got me hooked was Ender’s Game.

Another one around the same time was Raptor Red.

Nothing too crazy, I was a kid after all.

The wizard of the Emerald City by Alexander Volkov

The King, by Dick Bruna. I can still recite it by heart 53 years later.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (because it was read to me)

Pirate’s Promise (first full book I read on my own)

Almost any Golden Book (Pokey Little Puppy) or

My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George),

Paddington Bear books.

Along with titles others have mentioned (Scarry, etc.). These are firsts

The Planet of Adventure series (it came as a single book) by Jack Vance.
It was more of an adventure book than sci-fi. Light on the science but amazingly descriptive with the details of its world building. It was the first time I could read a book and really experience it like I was there. I dug it out of my dad’s sci-fi collection when I was about 11 I think. It was a Dutch translation and came with a separate map. I loved that map so much, you could follow the journey and fantasize about all those other parts that weren’t mentioned in the book.

So yea, it’s the book that opened a whole realm of imagination for me.

Richard Scarry’s “What do people do all day” is such a fun book that even now I wish I had again just to flip through the pages and see the intricacies of the drawings

The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O Shea. Pure Irish fantasy set in real locations I know in Ireland.

Old Man and the Sea, the first reading assignment I actually enjoyed. Sure it took 5 years after being weaned off of picture books to seriously get into reading, but hey I’m thankful because there’s no adventure quite like the kind that comes from a good book.