First book

What was the first book you remember reading/being read?

Mine was A Little Golden Book called The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey.

The first book I remember reading is Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.

Are You My Mother? by P D Eastman. I still have it. All the children in our family have loved it.

I can't remember the names of some of my very early picture books. One was about 3 kittens and an older cat and had cute old fashioned paintings of the characters. Another was about 3 ducklings who got into some trouble. Similar artwork as I recall.

Some I do remember were my Golden Books - The Tawny Scrawny Lion and The Saggy Baggy Elephant and There is a Monster at the End of this Book.

My mom would get tons of library books for me, too and my favories were Little Bear and Francis The Badger books.

One I remember and wish I could find was called The Mouse Ball and was about some mice who had a party to celebrate a huge tub of butter. They all dressed in their finest clothes and made a deal with the cat to leave them alone. But when two young mice got into the butter and slipped out of their clothes, it was too much for the cat and he burst in and ruined everything. He had curly whiskers.

Mine was the first volume of the My Book House set that came with our encyclopedias. My sister gave them to me a few years ago and they are treasured possessions. I loved the stories, but I think the art captured me more, since then I've always had a weakness for Arthur Rackham, Kay Neilsen, Dulac etc, just because they remind me of the artwork in those books.

The first book I remember reading was a Henry and Mudge book. My older brother was trying to read it out loud with my mom, and I was reading it by lying along the back of the couch looking over their shoulders. He read like as lick, and I corrected him.

Probably the first book I read by myself was The Cat in the Hat. But it's hard to remember which books I read myself, and which were read to me so often that I memorized them. I loved the Little Bear books, especially the Birthday Soup story, and Make Way for Ducklings, and a great book called Mr. Koala Bear that is out of print (I tried to find it recently as a gift for a child). And, of course Goodnight Moon. And The Little Engine That Could. But I really don't know when I crossed over into reading versus being read to.

John Mouse and the Apple Adventure by Roger Hargreaves. I received it for my first birthday, and knew it by heart before I could speak in sentences otherwise, if you see what I mean. I would make anyone who skipped a word at bedtime go back and start again, they couldn't fool me. :-)

My husband bought me a copy for my 31st birthday, along with the rest of the John Mouse books. Best present ever!

The first book I remember reading was called Ballerina Bess. I've never seen it in stores, and I don't have the copy anymore.

I don't remember the first book I read, but I remember the first that was read to me. It was called Il giornalino di Giamburrasca, which is a classic for Italian children and, sadly, has never been translated, at least not in English.
:-))

Caroline in Africa. Don't know who wrote it or where it is now. I remember my parents reading it to me and loving the words "baobab tree" even though I didn't know what it was. Also at that time: Dondi, Crusader Rabbit and Heidi.

There was a little golden book about a little critter (mouse?) and a silver dandelion. Everybody else had picked yellow dandelions and he couldn't find one. He felt very left out. Then he came across a silver one (the puffy kind) and felt very special, especially when the seeds blew everywhere and, a little while later, there were tons of dandelions everywhere. I don't remember the name of the book, but I was fascinated with silver dandelions after that. I was the little girl who would blow the seeds all over the courtyard and drive the gardeners mad for spreading these weedy flowers. They were never weeds to me!

... another Are you my mother? vet here!

I was read to so much as a child, I can't remember just one that was first. Early ones that are still favorites are Need a House, Call Ms. Mouse, Pigs in Hiding, Whose Mouse Are You?, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

My parents tell me that the first book I read on my own was Peter Pan, but I suspect it was probably a Golden Book version of the Disney movie.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I think I was about 6. My mother read it aloud to us, and I think I was able to read along a bit, although the edition we had had very tiny print, making it a real challenge.

I'm sure mine were the ubiquitous Little Golden Book fare - they were printed here. I know Poky Little Puppy and the Disney stories were among those. The one I remember best is The Monster at the End of This Book with Grover from Sesame Street. :^D

Mine is also The Poky Little Puppy! I loved that book when I was little. I also remember some books about a mouse named Tippu, early on, and my parents started to read me The Chronicles of Narnia when I was two or three.

I found Bookmarque's long-lost book:

The Mouseball.
by Manfred Kyber
Illus. by Trudi Oberhänsli. English translation by Roseanna Hoover.
New York, Atheneum 1969
20p. col. illus. 31 cm.
4.95
When they discover a tub of butter in their cellar, the mice decide to hold a ball to celebrate the occasion, but first they must get the cat to cooperate.

Amazon resellers are showing 8 used copies available from $3.50-$38.00

Are You My Mother was the first book I remember, and I could "read" it (recite from memory while looking at the pictures) before I was 2. Every child in my family receives this book, and they all love it and know it by heart. A close second was and still is The Monster at the End of This Book.

Are You My Mother? here. I still have the same copy I learned to read from too. Its falling apart, and held together with masking tape, but I love it!

My copy of What Do People Do All Day has an inscription from my mother, who bought it for me when I was 3 years old. This was not my first book, but certainly was the one that had the most influence on me.

The first book I read when I was learning to read was a little story about a lady bug. I don't remember what the title was or if it was even a properly published story, cause I remember it being given to me as a little photocopied booklet.

Books I remember from my early childhood include Robert Munsch, the Little Golden Books series and Dr. Seuss. I couldn't say what the first book I was read was.

The Saggy, Baggy Elephant. The illustrations still color my dreams.

Ever since this thread started I tried to remember my first book, or one of the first ones. It made me really sad that I just couldn't. I felt like I was born with a book in my hands and my mom reading one to me...
But now I stumbled across a book on LT and I remembered. One of my first books ever was "Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt" (The very hungry caterpillar - the German title doesn't touchstone) by Eric Carle. I'm sure it wasn't the first picture book I looked at or later read, but it is the one I have the fondest memories of. I loved it and I'm sure it's still in a box in my mom's basement. I am really motivated now to finally get those books.

I've been told that one of my first and favorite books was Dr. Seuss's Go Dog, Go. I'm not completely sure what first book I read was; but I think it was a book called Jessie Bear.

Mom said my favorite was Snow White. I still love all the fairy tales for Hans Christian and Grimm's Brothers.

My sister taught me to read with the Dick and Jane books she was learning from in 1st grade. I could read before I went to kindergarten because of this. We owned very few books at home, but Are You My Mother? and I Like To Be Me are my favorites still.

Hungrey catepillar was there. Dr Seuss too. I was certainly read by my parents a book about cows - Sampson and Delilagh ? - which involved Sampson being given rubber boot to touch an electric fence. He was Insoooooolated. How do I know this? My parents still complain about having to read this to me an infinite number of times......

I was read water babies too, when I was pretty young. I'd certainly started reading my own books before I went to school.

I have to say Are You My Mother? was a first for me as well! The first book I remember picking out for myself at the book store was Serendipity. I loved the pictures.

perodicticus thanks for bringing back some memories.

When I was five the bookmobile came to a playground in my neighborhood. I got my first library card. I remember the first book I checked out was "A Frog A Courting He Did Go." I'll never forget that book.

The libary was too far from my house to walk but my mother found a way to get me there on Saturdays.

The Chattanooga Public Library had a children's libary with a separate entranace downstairs from the main library. Everything was scaled down to child size. Even the librarians sat in chairs and at a desk that was the right size for children. But that was the only childlike thing about it. They taught us how to use the card catalog and the readers guide to periodic literature. They had children's books of course but also regular books. It was a joy.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown -- has to be. When I read it to my kids for the first time, lots of long-forgotten memories came back to me. I remembered the bed, the color of the walls, my pajamas and the ones my older brothers wore (that I got as hand-me-downs as I got older), what my mother was wearing, the bedspread... everything.

The first "real" book I read on my own was Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. I was six.

Wow, talk about memory lane!
My favorites were
Oink and Pearl, Couldn't we have a Turtle Instead?, Green Eggs and Ham, and Goodnight Moon...they were some of the first ones I read myself. Oh and there was a book I can't remember, about a girl named Jennifer, she feeds a horse an apple and goes for a walk in the woods, looks at a spider web, and I believe black eyed susans feature in it ...anyone remember the name of this book? I can't imagine how I forgot it!

The King who rained was the first book I read by myself in Kindergarten. It was a pun book.

Anybody remember Harold and the Purple Crayon? How about Where the Wild Things Are? I also remember Pokey Little Puppy and all the Dr. Suess.

#35 Lola, I loved the Pippi Longstocking books, but they weren't first for me.

I loved the Pippi Longstocking books, but they weren't first for me.

I know there were one or two other, but I only ever read the first one... probably a hundred times. :)

Well, it wasn't the first book, as such, for me either--oodles of picture books, comics and, most important, Ladybird books came before.

When I was three, my babysitter used to take me down the street to her parents' house where she would have me read aloud from an old Dick and Jane book. I can't remember what the text said anymore, but the colorful illustrations are still very vivid in my mind.

The first thing I remember reading on my own is the "Little Boy Blue" nursery rhyme. Not sure what book it was in, probably a Golden Book as I had loads of those.

I can't remember the first book I read, but I do have fond memories of Pat the Bunny and The Monster at the end of this Book. I would read them over and over and over.....

Ballerina Bess by author unknown, as I see #9 also read!

I'm apparently older than a good many of you!! :-O Monster at the End of This Book didn't come along until I was a librarian myself. But I do remember Little Engine that Could, and the original A. A. Milne books. Momma read lots of basic fairy tales and nursery rhymes. She read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books very early. I remember Dick and Jane books from school (I AM old!!).

#26: Go Dog, Go isn't Dr. Seuss, but had a Cat in the Hat on the cover, because it was a Beginning Reader from that Random House series. Actually, the author was P. D. Eastman.

#37: The King Who Rained was written by Fred Gwynne - the actor you may remember from "Car 54, Where Are You?" No? How about Herman Munster in "The Munsters"?

The first book I have a clear memory of is Horton Hatches an Egg which is by Dr. Seuss. I'm sure Mom read many other books to me, but I think Horton is the first one I "read" (memorized).

#37 - If you don't remember "Car 54" or "The Munsters", Fred Gwynne was also the judge in "My Cousin Vinny".

**Horton seems shy today. He won't touchstone**

***Edited to see if Horton wants to play today. Hi, Horton!***

For me it was Willie Is My Brother by Peggy Parish. I remember reading it and having it read to me.

"Beef stew, chicken stew, what kind of stew are you, Stew.......?" Man, the memories that brings back!

I was read The Little Engine that Could in kindergarten.

The first library book checked out was a juvenile science fiction book in the Tom Swift series. This was in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

In the summer between the 6th & 7th grades, I was shown a piece of incunabula at the library of the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, FL.

The first book I convinced a librarian to buy was a history of the Virginian Railway because the builder of this railroad, Henry H. Rogers, had been born in the town of Fairhaven, MA, where the library was located (Millicent Library which was built by Rogers).

Bob Campbell

The first book I remember, I don't quite remember the title of. It was given to me by my kindergarten teacher (or at least, that's what my memory says; I could be wrong) and I seem to remember the title as Bad Elephant or Naughty Elephant or something - it was about a young elephant who kept getting into trouble. It was blue and black...

The first book I remember being read was D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I still have it - two copies, in fact. Oh, my parents came to hate that book, because I wanted it read to me every night...then once I could read it, I read it over and over again, until the paperback copy we had was falling apart. So they got me a hardback copy.

Wow, definitely some great memories here.
I think one of the first non Golden books I read by myself was Milly Molly Mandy as I remember not knowing of mustard & cress (?) and asking what it was.

We recently became uncle and aunt for the first time and went nuts at a book store buying all the Golden Book classics, plus Where The Wild Things Are as our baby gift.
Hey, they got enough clothes from everyone else :-)

Cute thread, Morph. :)

The first one I remember reading without help is The Rooster Who Refused to Crow by Thomas Crawford and Judith Fringuello. (Book title won't load.)

But The Monster at the End of this Book and The Very Hungry Caterpillar are early memories too. And of course Are You My Mother?, but mom read that to us. :D

bluesalamanders: Could your title have been a Little Golden Book called Saggy Baggy Elephant?

I was wracking my brain yesterday for a train book I remember way early. Got it. It was Tootle. My daddy was a railroad man, and apparently I read a lot of train books. I also remember Little Red Caboose, although I was taught that "real railroad people" called the last little red car a "waycar" - never a caboose!!

MerryMary - no, it wasn't a golden book. And it was all elephants, I don't think there were other animals...the naughty little elephant would squirt water at the other elephants and otherwise irritate them. And basically the whole thing was dark blue and black.

If comic books count then it would be Casper and the Ghostly Trio. I distinctly remember asking my Mom how to pronounce the word "Trio". My first real book had to have been a Beverly Clearly book called Ralph and the Motorcycle. One of the best children book authors...ever.

I think mine was titled "My Adopted Family" (It's still with me, somewhere in the cartons of books in the attic). It was special because my mother made it so.

My family wasn't a reading family, so I was first enchanted with books by my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Peitz. The three that stay with me are Johnny Tremain, Harriet the Spy (especially Harriet!!) and Charlotte's Web.

As for comic books...well, I used to spend endless summers on a farm in Pennsylvania where my grandparents ran the country store - and I had their entire inventory of comics to go through! Little Dot comes to mind now.

As I write this, I also seem to recall the "Ripley's Believe It or Not" series. Great reading for long car rides!

I know it wasn't the first book I ever read, but the first book I can remember the title of is The Monster at the End of this Book.

Poor Grover.

bluesalamanders - I've had another thought. (Gonna have to start rationing them pretty soon or I'll run out!) I have a dark green and blue edition of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk" from Just So Stories. Maybe??

MerryMary - Seriously, the story was about a young elephant who got in trouble for annoying the other elephants. And it was blue and black.

My parents always read to me and I have no idea what the first book was. I asked my mother though because I'm really curious now. She said she'll remember later...
The first book I read (knew by heart) was The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I "read" it to the other children in day care all the time. I must have been three at most.
My cousin then taught me how to read with the Tobi-Fibel. We got to page 24. From then on I probably I read everything I could find.

bluesalamanders - I TOLD you I had to ration my thoughts. When I have too many, they get thin and puny. Sorry. :-D

I know I had a bunch of those Little Golden Books, but the first "big girl" book I ever read was a Trixie Beldon Secret of the Mansion. I wasn't in school yet and was spending the night with my older cousins. My aunt handed it to me at bed time and told me to try it, or just look at the pictures while the bigger girls read. I was so hooked that my mother had to go buy them all. The only thing is that for years I thought her oldest brothers name was Brain, not Brian.
Imagine my first day at school when they passed out Tip and Mitten. I raised my hand and asked where they kept the mystery books. I still have all my Trixie Beldons and my Nancy Drews.

All these books take me back to my own childhood. Here is my funny story: when I was a child, my American family lived in foreign lands, and as small children, my siblings and I tended to pick up different languages, promptly losing them after we moved away. The first book I remember having read to me was The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff. The second was the original Winnie the Pooh by A A Milne, with illustrations by E H Shephard. Years later, when I was studying children's literature in college, I still remembered these books vividly, so I returned to my family's bookshelves to pull them out, planning to carry them off to read them again. Surprise: Babaar was in French and Winnie the Pooh in German -- both languages I no longer spoke. But in my memories, both those books had been read to me in English!

Little Yip-Yip and his bark by Kathryn and Byron Jackson (I still have it); A Child's Garden of Verses; Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne.

hiya Morphidae

The first books I read and enjoyed immensely as a kid where the Dr. Seuss books: Oh, The Places You Go, Green Eggs and Ham, Cat in The Hat and the others. The illustrations fascinated me as a child and they fed my curiousity.

Love the Berenstain Bears too.

I was given great liberty to use my father's library and found a yellow hardbound Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner translated in our vernacular as Ni Emil ken dagiti detectib. As a child, it was hard reading it translated as we were thought English in school. I watched the film adaptation luckily.

i don't really remember the first book i read. fun with dick and jane? the first book i read that i liked had to be treasure island. does that cout?

"Heidi" My Mom read it to me in chapters. I still own the copy she gave me, inscribed :

"Merry Christmas Jeannie
Love, Mom & Dad" 1955

I was four years old.

Of course there were the Dr. Suess books and the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy series ( some of which I still own) but the book that formed my love of stories was Heidi.

The First Book I remember reading was The Long Winter By Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was in first grade or kindergarten. I know before that I read a lot but I can't really remember any of the titles I know in kindergarten I was reading Heidi and some of the Dr. Suess Books. But I skipped right over all the little golden books sadly.

Heidi! I haven't heard anyone mention that book in years! It was my favorite as a child, growing up, and the first full-length books I remember reading on my own. I wanted to crawl into that book and live. I was born in 1948 -- I am sure my early taste in books is a dead giveaway!

Found it!

I was helping my mom sort through the books in her first grade classroom last weekend and she had several copies of Elephant in Trouble, which is the book I was talking about.

Wow, lots of memories coming up! Pokey Little Puppy is an early memory, also the original Winnie the Pooh books - actually I had several A.A. Milne books - I remember Now We are Six and the one with the poem with "You mustn't go down to the end of the town..." - ah, When We Were Very Young. I still have Heidi, and at one point I had Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children - I gave them to a young cousin of mine a few years ago. The Story of Babar - that was one read to me until I could read it myself. Lots of Dr. Seuss. Emil and the Detectives, yes, though that may have been later (as was Heidi). Kipling's Just So Stories and The Jungle Books too, though my father used to tell us his own bedtime stories more often than he read those.

I was fortunate enough to go to a Montessori kindergarten, and they weren't surprised that I could read. My sister was told in her kindergarten class (a year later, in a different country) that kindergarteners couldn't read - she believed them and it took us _years_ to get her reading for fun again (she had been, before she went to school). I know that I owned more than a thousand books when I was nine - I had to inventory them and it took too long to count so I did average-books-per-foot-of-shelf*feet-of-shelves and came out with about 1000, which was almost certainly an undercount.

bluesalamanders, MerryMary - I was thinking of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk" too - he did annoy the other elephants, and at the end he did squirt them. Now I need to go find a copy of Elephant in Trouble and see what that story is. Thanks! New books are always neat.

jjmcgaffey: What wonderful memories! I, too, went to a Montessori school, in Germany, and remember how much more trusting of knowledge and learning the whole system was. When I began attending a traditional American school in 4th grade, I was astonished at the emphasis on standing in line and other acts of propriety.

And I adored Just So Stories. In later years, I read it aloud to my students in both Middle and High School, and they delighted in the language and soon we all said, "By the banks of the great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees ..." (I live near there now) and "Best Beloved" just for the joy of the sounds. Thanks for resurrecting it all!

I distinctly remember getting a box set of Golden Books for Christmas when I was 5. Those books are what hooked me on reading and loving books. I read them more times than I could count. I loved them.

I posted more about it on my blog. Those books meant so much to me and I fully intend to keep my future children stocked in Golden Books.

I'm sure my parents read some when I was little because I recognize a lot of books, especially the Dr. Seuss books. But, I don't have any clear memories of it. I seem to recall Green Eggs and Ham. Oh, and Hop on Pop which I remember disturbed me a lot.

This makes me think, I've already forgotten what the first book I read to my daughter was (she's almost four)... Maybe it was Moo, Baa, La La La!. For my son (almost two) it was OH! by Josse Goffin, because that was the first book he would actually sit and pay attention to, a major breakthrough us. Also, Boyton's Doggies kept his attention.