That One Special Book...

[Ogre]

What was that one story that you read (or had read to you) that started your interest in books and literature? What was that orgional book that changed the way you see books so that they are no longer a boring collection of pages but something more wonderful?

 

Mine was 'the Witches' by Roald Dahl...it's fantastic. the funny and scarey description of the witches, the way Luke describe being a mouse after the witches catch him and the scene between Luke and his grandmother at the end where their talking about death and how they can die together because mice have short lifespans (being very sweet and shocking for childrens literature).

 

Thank you Roald Dahl.

 

i'm sure many people can remember the first book and the first writer who truely inspired them, who was it...i want to know

[sugartits]

I can't really remember a time when I wasn't obsessed with books... but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Chronicles of Narnia series that really got me into reading.

[sugartits]

That and Winnie-the-Pooh <3

[Joe Belzberg]

I was really into the Animorphs series in third grade, I think it was the first thing I was ever really obsessed with. The final book in the series had a massive cliff-hanger ending; I blame my middle-school era obsession with fan-fiction almost wholly on it.

[Minikimii]

I'm pretty sure it was one of the Mandarin Chinese children's books from when I was a kid. I don't really ever remember a time when I WASN'T reading, and those picture-ish books are the earliest memory I can think of related to text.
I miss being fluently bilingual.

[Nicole Carey]

I hated books and I pretty much couldn't read 7th grade. My class class read Among the Hidden by Margaret Pererson Haddix and I still hated reading, but when my grandma bet my mom that she could get me to read, she got me the rest of the Shadow Chlideren series. I finished four books in two weeks. Thank you Margaret Peterson Haddix, for writing the series that started me on a life-long reading tangent!!!

[Jade]

Those books were brilliant! I read the first one in fourth grade, but you know how it is with reading; other books came up and I got distracted from the series, but I finished it up the summer before ninth grade. It's amazing how a story I began five years before was still good, even after I had got into things like Jane Austen and the Brontes.

[Nicky]

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine changed my life [besides Paper Towns, but that's another story].

Walk Two Moons I read when I was ten, and then re-read shortly after my dad died when I was twelve. It changed how I looked at his death, and eased it a bit.

I read Ella Enchanted when I was ten or eleven, and I just love the story so much. It also makes me look at my OCD differently, and when I was younger not feel so alone.

[Brian Rice]

Believe it or not the first Harry Potter book was the first normal sized book i ever read on my own that i can remember in like 1st or second grade and that spawned my love of fantasy based fiction. which has now brached out into a big variety of books.

[Deanna]

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I've always been a reader, but that book, changed everything.

[Jade]

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden.
At first it seems like a children's book, but it has deeper messages hidden in the story, and I never get tired of rereading it. There's just something enchanting about the story. I would highly recommend it!

[Malene]

I had to learn to read effectively in english first and that didn't happen untill when I was around 16 or 17. Until then I had read translations of foreign books but it's never quite the same.
I picked up a book at my library for a school project I was supposed to do. It must have been a book report thing.
I chose a book called "All The Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy. Back then I was an avid horseback rider aswell so I figured it would be right up my ally.
I struggled my way through this book because the language was far too advanced for me at the time, but I refused to give up and by the time the deadline came up I was still only half way through it. So far I can remember the books splits up at a certain place in the story and I chose to stop there and write my book report on the half story I had read. (I still aced it, even though my language wasn't good enough to read the book as effectively as I had planned)

I still considered it to be a great victory and since then my english language only got better with time and I can now read "big grownup books" as effectively as I can read them in danish. I recently finished Dan Browns new book The Lost Symbol quicker then my sister did reading it in danish.

I never finished All The Pretty Horses back then, but as I just googled it, I understand it's the first installement in a trilogy, I'm quite tempted to pick it up again.

As far as the titles that made me love literature in danish, I remember having Hans Christian Andersens stories read to me as a child. My favourite back then was The Little Match Girl. It's a terribly sad story but I doubt back then I fully understood it. I have Hans Christian Andersens published works in my book case and I often reread them.

[Lucy]

Ella Enchanted was the first book that I really loved, and I think it was the book that truly sparked my love of books. I've read it at least three times, and I've listened to it on tape six times or more.

The first real book in my life was The Hobbit. My mother read it to me when I was about seven, and then I read it again to myself in third grade. So, my mom was really my first reading inspiration. She also read me The Red Pony when I was eight or nine.