The Best Book You Ever Read as a Kid

[B-17]

This was my first favorite book. 

(Image removed from quote.)

YYYEEEEAAAHHHH!

[DEECONX]

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Never has a series of books affected me so much.

[Guppy35]

OK is this before teenager or as a teenager?

If it's all before teenager years, some of you folks read some serious stuff in grade school!

[800nate800]

Tom clancys END WAR Tom Clancy's EndWar   
 
 
 

[SIK1]

The first book I read that really made an impression was Jack London's "The Call of the Wild"  I was eight or nine.

[MarineUS]

The first book I read that really made an impression was Jack London's "The Call of the Wild"  I was eight or nine.

I was about the same age when I read that one as well. GREAT book. 

[Auger]

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel got me hooked on SF.

Thud Ridge stoked the pilot fire and made me want to read everything I could find on aerial combat.

Cat's Cradle and Player Piano were quite enlightening and caused my teen self to cast a more critical eye on how the world worked.

[BoilerDown]

OK is this before teenager or as a teenager?

If it's all before teenager years, some of you folks read some serious stuff in grade school!

No kidding.  A lot of what people have listed I was forced to read in middle or high school.  I'm having a hard time figuring out which of them I actually read before I was 13 and which I actually liked.  Most of what I was forced to read I didn't like all that much.

Jurassic Park would be high on my list, as someone else mentioned, but I'm pretty sure I was over the age of 13 by the time I read it.  I read it before I saw the movie, knowing the movie was coming out soon.  Ever since then I decided to watch the movie before reading the book (it was too late for LotR, but I didn't re-read that until after I saw all three movies).

I'm going to go with 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  I remember having to look up the word "Maelstrom" in the dictionary and being unsatisfied with the definition.

[Guppy35]

Well if we're including teen age years, my list expands although the first two that came to mind were "Treblinka" and "The Murderers Among US"  Found them on my uncle's shelf and read them over a weekend.  13 or 14.  I'd never heard of the Holocaust.  Talk about eye opening.  I had no idea up to that point that people could be so cruel to people.

I'd read a lot about WW2 but those two really changed my perspective.

[Debrody]

The Lord of the Rings, by far.

Some historical novels were pretty much entertaining too, about Attila, the 150 years war, or 1848.

[Hoffman]

As a kid? Around 10 years old my Father got me hooked on science fiction books starting with Larry Niven and moving on to Laumer, Chalker, Frank Herbert, and Heinlen.

My favorite books...
Really a tie between Ringworld by Larry Niven and the Bolo series by Keith Laumer.
Both had me teaching myself physics from my Father's college books in middle school(11-13 years old) in order to actually figure out what was going on...  Best education a kid can possibly receive in my opinion.  Hook 'em on science fiction then give them an algebra textbook and a physics textbook and let them learn it by themselves.


Best book as an adult?  Pick a book written by Terry Pratchett, or any of the Sten series.

[Sonicblu]

Read a lot of books when I was younger still read all the time.

I would have to go with Great Expectations by Dickens.

Where the red fern grows and Summer of the Monkeys I remember fondly.

Never got into sci-fi until later.

[4Prop]

This was my first favorite book. 

(Image removed from quote.)

mine to

[PFactorDave]

I would have to go with Great Expectations by Dickens.

Really?

They forced us to read that book when I was in 8th grade.  Painfully boring, in my opinion.  Same goes for The Great Gatsby...  bleh

[B4Buster]

The Iliad.