My favourite authors were Beverly Cleary and Peggy Parish. I loved all the trouble Ramona unwittingly caused and I liked Amelia Bedelia's verbal confusions. I always found them very funny.

I recall liking Beatrix Potter's books for their art more than the stories. There was also beautiful art in a fairy tale book I'd acquired one Christmas. My favourite story in that was "The White Cat" and I read it over and over again until the book fell apart. I still have the book.

I also retained my battered copy of Wizard of Oz for years and read it, even though it was in three pieces and required an elastic to hold together. I've looked around for an identical edition but have yet to get lucky.

Last, was a story called Magic Elizabeth about a little girl who visits a crusty great aunt, finds a doll and some clothes in the attic and winds up solving a mystery involving the doll and its original owner. It was a wonderful little story. I'd almost forgotten all about it but stumbled across a copy of the book at a flea market. I still have it.

I always enjoyed reading The Giver, which is an interesting tale about a dystopian "perfect world".

:O

I read that book, in no exaggeration, at least 25-30 times. But I do that with most books that I find particularly interesting.

Truth be told, I was more of a comic book kid growing up. The majority of the actual books I read were assigned by my teachers, so I'm sure that everyone has already indulged in them.

I tried to read the Narnia series as a kid, but I lacked the attention span to read more than one or two chapters of the first book. One series of children's books that I particularly enjoyed was the Young Merlin trilogy by Jane Yolen. (I can't remember how old I was at the time, but Amazon says the third was published in 1997, so I was probably between 9 and 12.) I think I still have the books in my room somewhere.

Later on, of course, I started reading Harry Potter. However, I think I stopped after the fourth book, and now that they've already made the first five films, I'll probably never finish reading the whole series. That's right, I'm lazy.

I read the Hobbit when I was 6 and Lord of The Rings one summer when I was 9, though it went over my head mostly until I re-read it when I was 11. I read everything published under Tolkien's name by the time I was 15. He was definitely the most important author for me when I grew up. Besides Tolkien, I dabbled in the sci-fi that my father reads, like Orson Scott Card novels and the Dune books. When I was 14 I discovered Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and since then have read mostly Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, Nietzsche, and Marx. I remember reading Narnia once, and there are ton of other random one-ofs that I've read.

I would say that in terms of my development as a reader, Tolkien was crucial. However it was Notes From Underground that opened my eyes to the potential of stories communicating philosophy. Great fiction has the details and lacks the definitions that make philosophical texts seem so obstructive and firm.

I would also take this opportunity to advocate for Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky. I'm sure some of the folks on this site have read it, and if so, I would love to converse about it. It's a story that of which I am always in need of more illumination. For those who haven't read it, it is a novella and so quite manageable. It's 1st person, the first part being in the present and the second part being in the past tense. In the words of Walter Kaufman it is the greatest overture on existentialism ever written. It is also an exhilarating and intriguing story.

Ah man, when I was a kid I read a series called Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey that I always found hilarious. Another series I followed was Bailey School Kids and they'd have books called "Vampires don't teach French class" and "Werewolves don't play basketball."

When I got older I got completely obsessed with the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card. It was a sci-fi about a boy who was entered into a child military program to train him to fight off an invading alien race. They're planning on making it into a movie sometime this year, really looking forward to it.

The Giver sounds worthwhile. It sounds like a book I'd enjoy. I'll put it on my ever expanding list of books to read.

I could have added Anne of Green Gables to my list, too. I fell in love with Anne after the movies and wound up with the whole set eventually. A Wrinkle in Time, Mr. Popper's Penguins, a book from school called Jane Emily that I'd love to find again, Gordon Korman and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were good once I got to junior high. There was also a set of books I no longer remember much about except the girl Samantha Slade, her friend Tommy and the two kids she babysat, Drake (a vampire) and Lupi (a werewolf). I recall donated them to the library after I lost a book. (Thought the best penance was giving up something I really liked)

Impressive that people would enjoy Tolkien at such a young age. I don't think I cracked the spine of The Hobbit until grade 9 or so and only read LOTR prior to the movie.

I think I read The Hobbit in about 7th grade for school (a choice reading), and I really enjoyed it. However, I tried to move on to reading The Fellowship of the Ring, and I just didn't have a good enough attention span to sit through it at that age.

I'm exactly sure what the difference was between the two books. Perhaps I should go back and reread all of them sometime again.