One of the first books I ever read was "The Dark is Rising." To this day, one particular scene - the protagonist is walking along a snowy road - has always stuck with me and given me a sense of literature as having more magical and more romantic possibilities than anything else in life. What is your best memory of a first book?
Well, it doesnt qualify as a 'book,' but the first story I ever read on my own was a fairy tale called "The Nightingale." It's about an emperor who believes that the song of the nightingale is the most beautiful sound. He captures her and makes her sing every day in capitivity in a golden cage, but her songs are not as beautiful when she is caged. But then a mechanical bird adorned with jewels is gifted to the emperor and he lets the nightingale go. The mechanical bird falls apart, and the emperor falls deathly ill. The real nightingale rests atop his windowsill and her beautiful song nurses him back to health. If you cant tell, it's still one of my favourite stories, and I still have the book I read it from. My fondest memories come from when my mother used to read it to me though, with all the funny voices she gave each character. D'awwwww....
The earliest book I can remember (and this is really scraping the edges of my mind) is about a boy and a dragon who go to a magical island. The dragon is blue with polka dots and stripes and they overcome lions and boars with things like banana peels and chewing gum, I think. It must have been first grade, and maybe something like Roald Dahl, but I can't even remember the title. And then there was a boy with a flying pet shark attached to a string like a kite.
The Very Hungry Catapillar. If you are looking for something with a bit more literary content, the first proper book I remember reading was an Anthology of Greek Mythology. It had colourful pictures, and told the stories of the Ancient Greeks, from Promethius and the Flame to Daedelus and Icarus. It installed in me the love for storytelling. Quite an inspiration. Of course, my mother being such, took all my children's books a while back, to a charity shop, claiming they were 'taking up space' in their massive country mansion. I was particularly gutted because I had a signed first edition of a book that my english teacher had written, Harry and the Wrinklies, and it was special to me.
The first books that I recall reading and remember well are both out of print: The King the Mice and the Cheese. Good children's story about cause and effect and/or unintended consequences. and The Dinosaur and the Dodo. A good story about fitting in. Terry
