I'm really please now when my granddaughter (who was emersed in the Twilight series a few years ago) now asks if she can borrow my 'Kite-runner, or 'The Help', or even a Jodi Picoult book.   She's seventeen now.   

I wonder if I could interest her in 'Gone With the Wind'.

And when will Grandson be ready for 'Call of the Wild' or 'White Fang'.

For young kids, I think I read many of the classics.  In terms of young adult stuff, it was mostly junk reading.  The same goes for now :)  I was hooked on Robin Cook in high school and early university, that last time I picked up an old one and reread it I was actually really disappointed with the quality though, I guess I have matured somewhat.

I don't think young adult is a bad section, as it can help narrow stuff down a bit if you're just looking for something that's interesting.  I did read adult books as a kid, but until I hit high school my Mom guided me away from anything with steamy sex scenes.  The first 'adult' author that I really remember getting into was Michael Crichton.

I was an s-f and fantasy geek from an early age. By grade 6 I was reading Verne, by grade 7 I was reading Wells and getting into contemporary s-f (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, et al.). That's also when I read Tolkien (The Hobbit and later The Lord of the Rings) for the first time. Thing is, very little of what I was reading was designated YA fiction. In fact, my grade 7 home room teacher was surprised to see a 12 year-old reading H. G. Wells.

My son has rather different tastes in reading. When he reads anything other than news and blogs, it tends to be non-fiction. Like his mother, he's not really into imagination.

Mendalla

Once I knew how to read, I went through anything that I could find.

Grade 1, read all the basics, then move don to Nancy Drew's

Grade 2, moved into neighbours bookshelves  for Nancy Drew's books (my older sister's friend) and my brother's hardy boys.

Summer going into grade 3 moved to Galt, didn't know anyone and so, reading was how I spent my summer. By the end, I was allowed into the adult section of the library but only science fiction. read heinlein (stranger in a strange land,etc), asimov, 

My mother gave me a collection of classics for christmas that year.  It had a two novels per book. You flipped it over.  The series included:  Little Women, Call of the Wild, Aesop's Fables, Gullivers travels, Christmas Carol, Rboinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson ...and the list went on, there were at least 30 novels..maybe more. 

About  12, I went back and read all of bobsey twins, british annuals, and something about 5 kids...(i think) that was british. I devoured basically al lmy sisters and brothers books.

i would also read anything that I could find in the house.  I think that I was about 13 when I found the happy hooker and david niven's "the moon is a balloon"

as a teenager, I was reading richard brautigan, margaret atwood, vonnegut, and other offbeat writings.   When desperate I would read my mothers  readers digest books, but htey were never as good as the original, so quickly tired of them.

Mandella - your reading choices are a lot like my sons.  He was into s-f, fantasy, and sports.   A few times he was actually scolded at school for reading adult books rather than those on the 'suggested reading list for grade five', or whatever.    

(I just got a Jeoprady question right last night by knowing that Hebert wrote the 'Dune' books. - I knew that from Seelerboy.)

Pinga - I love your selection of books.  You and I could probably have formed our own little book club.   Did teachers find it frustrating to be introducing a book or author and find out that you had read it several years previously?   

Seeler, I think you would have been a wonderful friend as a youth and we would have enjoyed sharing and talking abou books.  I think that youth today have an advantage over youth of your & my day. There was no way to connect with fellow book lovers , other than through school, and I don't remember anyone who read as I did in my youth.

I remember having to do reading in grade 5, we had a collection of short stories.  I powered through them, then asked if I could read the grade 4 book (I had skipped grade 4 and was in a 4/5 split).  I honestly don't remember what our required readings were in the senior public years, but by the time we got to highschool, they tended to be classics, and so I just started reading more of them.  

I had a wonderful grade 11(?) english teacher who had a special shelf for students who read the mandatory books.  It was like crack to me.  I powered through the mandatory to get to wonderfully interesting novels.  I was lucky enough to have her for 2 years.  Truly a great teacher who I had the opportunity to thank many years later for her gifts.

My youngest son's reading is similair to mine.  He went from not reading (and being late) to being a massive reader and devouring books.  He continues to be a major reader, being a big fan of Abes Books

As a kid I read everything that had words -including cereal boxes.  I think Pinga read the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton.  She was a prolific writer of books for kids and many of them got banned eventually because of the sexism and 'elitism' they contained.  In a similar vein she had the Secret Seven series and the Mystery of...... series.

I recall a series about shoes - Ballet Shoes, Tennis Shoes etc and loved the Swallows and Amazons books. Most of the books mentioned so far were devoured by me - plus Neville Shute (Chute?) and war stories like The Cruel Sea. I read some of the Dr Doolittle series but I didn't enjoy them much.

Access wasn't easy. There was a small lending library nearby but I wasn't allowed to get fiction out of the adult section until I was fourteen.  The selection in the kids' area wasn't changed during my childhood and I had read most of the things that appealed by the time I was about eleven.  The library at my school wasalso quite limited (but one teacher occasionally lent me a book!). On the plus side, we had books in our house (some left from my mom's childhood, some belonging to older siblings, some given to me at Christmas etc).   I read Dickens because his books were there and enjoyed the long sentences and wide vocabulary.   I rapidly moved on to mysteries and historical romance borrowed from the library by my parents - (anyone read Eliz(s)abeth Goudge?).

They had the same rule at our library but for some reason we were able to break that for me that summer. I am thankful for a kind and intelligent librarian

Seeler, it sounds like you had some bad experiences with teachers.  I've never heard of a teacher who was frustrated because a student had already read a book, or was reading something not intended for their grade.

My LA and English classes might have been very different though.  Elementary school probably had the most required reading, younger grades it was one book for the entire class and teachers would read it to us.  Later on, we would have a selection of books to choose from that would put us into a small group.  Sometimes we had to read aloud in our groups, other times we had to read at home and then work on assignments in our groups.  We also had times where teachers would read to us, but there were no assignments related to that time.  There were also free reading times, again no assignments and we would just pick whatever we wanted and sit quietly and read.

Jr. high was mostly short stories for the entire class.  I had a teacher who liked to read us Stephen King on Fridays.  I only remember 2 books from grades 7-9 that the entire class did and would have been on some type of list.  We did do quite a few book reports, but we were free to pick whatever we wanted.

High school was the same a jr. high, plus factor in Shakesphere.  In one grade, my teacher actually read to Kill a Mockingbird aloud, very slowly, stopping to explain words.  I took half of the year and I thought I somehow got into the wrong stream, but I was just stuck with quite a few students who probably were in the wrong stream.

Off topic a bit, but from my experience I would have been shocked to see a teacher frustrated because someone had already read something like to Kill a Mockingbird.  If anything, my teachers sometimes were slightly frustrated with my choice of 'junk' books and would encourage me into something a bit more substantial.

*mouth hangs open*

I read the Laura Inglalls books (Little House in the Big Woods, etc) over and over when I was little. For that matter I still read some of them from time to time.  I also think I owned pretty much every Serendipity book and Little Golden Book that existed at the time (I think they are still all boxed in my Mom's attic).  Plus things like Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham.

In the latter part of grade school (grade 4 or 5 onwards) loved Nancy Drew books and Star Trek novels. I read the Hobbit in 6th or 7th grade and then moved on to the LOTR books. I read a lot of Lurlene McDaniel's books Six Months to Live, etc (they were mainly about young persons battling cancer or other potentially terminal diseases). I also fell in love with Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series as a child.

I started to read Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear Series when I was 11 or 12 years old. A lot of people thought I wasn't old enough to be reading books that talked about rape and had some fairly explicit sex scenes in at the time. They definitely do not qualify as 'young adult books'

I also started in on Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series pretty much as soon as it started being published.  Which would have made me about 12 or 13 when I read Outlander the first time

I didn't actually get into Asimov and Heinlein until I was in University. My Mercedes Lackey addiction also dates to my University days. And my love of Harry Potter.

One of the side benefits to knowing the people who had Library keys - sometimes they'd let me in after hours and turn a blind eye to what I borrowed. Also no one ever tried to limit my access to things like the mythology section or books on botany and the other sciences.

Also if there was something I really wanted to read and the librarians were being too prudish about it my Aunt or my Grandmother would check the book out and I'd read it at their house.

I loved those.  I think I read them for about 5 years.

My parents took out books from the library for me.

At age fourteen I was eager to hear what book we would be studying in Lit.  When the teacher told us she must have noticed the look of dismay on my face.  She reamed me out assuming I was objecting to the choice of A Tale of Two Cities.  For me though the problem was that I had already read it twice!

In Elementary we had a teacher who 'bribed' us to get the assigned work done quickly.  Once the actual work wa completed she read to us - mostly poetry.  Sometimes a student was allowed to choose what was read.Avery poopular choice was something from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  I have most of it engraved in my memory and have recited for my grands.  Another popular poem was Five Eyes.

My kids and grands weren't expected to memorise poetry and are amazed when I manage to drag one out the recesses of my brain.  Tennyson, Keats, e e cummings etc etc. My partner was supposed to but doesn't recall any of them.

I read Clan at 14 or 15. It was just out and was recommended by my history teacher as we were doing prehistory in the course. He didn't even mention the rape scene but I was also reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson which also has a lynchpin rape so it didn't exactly phase me. Loved it. Then Valley came out and I eagerly got it and read it and ... that was that for me and Jean Auel. To my eyes, it read like a bodice-ripper in animal skins and that lost me. The sex was pretty explicit, if well-written, in that one.

Strangely, I did not encounter Old Possum until Lloyd-Webber's musical Cats, which used it as the book, came out. I was rather startled to find that Eliot, who I knew as the rather dark poet of The Wasteland, had written kid-friendly poems about cats.

Mendalla

seeler, you asked what do your children read.

I have two boys who I read to as children equally.  We always read before bed, and there were lots of books of all varieties around.

The oldest reads about the same as his Dad, he will pick up a book but not often.

The youngest reads like me, he devours books.

When they were reading as children, the Harry Potter series was a serious thing to read and we waited anxiously for new ones to come out. Golden Compass was one that I read to them.  Jean Little's books were read as well, with "willow and twig" being one of my favourite to read aloud.  

As they grew, the youngest son caught my love of fantasy.  He has read many many books.  We once had a man come down to us at a soccer game and ask me how old he was. He was stunned when I told him.  He would sit and watch my youngestson at later games reading and soemtimes make comments.  YoungestSon was quite little and was reading 1000 page novels.  The man was a prof at one of the local universities and we would laugh about how he wished his students could read so well.  he would ask questions of youngestson to see if he was absorbing, he was.

I share that story as I realize how much of reading and books is really personal and not necessarily environmental. 

Rowan, it was in university that I stumbled on the female authors, alternate society stuff and devoured books from Ursala K Le Guin, Anne McAffrey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Vonda McIntyre, and Zenna Henderson.

Hah, I just found this thread:  http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/popular-culture/influence-pre-teen-teen-reading-choices

what will we do when the site is no longer avaialble. boo.

Books were scarce and for several years, there was no library. I ordered books through the Manitoba Extension Library. They came postage paid both ways. I was their best customer.

And I read the comics in the newspaper. I remember I was really young. I read everything.

The only book I did not like and din't finish reading was "Alice In Wonderland".

I was a major bookwork as a kid and still read some. My whole family has always been bookworks, my mother had over 10,000 books when she died. I like stuff like Piers Anthony, Dr. Who, Robert Asprin, Terry Pratchett and other sci-fi and light fantasy now. I was more ecclectic as a kid but even then I remember Chronicles of Narnia, Madeline L'Engle, Lloyd Alexander, Susan B. Cooper and then later Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. My daughter is a big reader too and trends goth a bit. As trendy as it is now vampires come up kind of often. We try to get more variety in her reading but at least she does read on her own.

Hi seeler,

The Three Musketeers was probably one of the first books I read as a child.  Apart from that it was H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs.  C.S. Lewis came later as did Tolkein.

I read with my son quite a bit while he was younger.  We read the whole Harry Potter series and when they were getting ready to releast the Lord of the Rings we started with the Hobbit and read all the way through to the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

That was a lot of long nights reading till I was dry.

He is now scrambling to find everything and anything written by R.A. Salvatore.

My eldest daughter is a voracious reader and basically devoured the Harry Potter series all on her own, then went through the Narnia chronicles.  It took me forever to get her to read the Hitchhiker's guide which she fell in love with right away.  I'm now pushing her to try the Dirk Gently novels because I think they are outrageously funny.

She reads and re-reads Les Miserables.  She is also a fan of the musical and the movie.

She started reading the Twilight series and then pitched it considering it to be fluff and nonsense.  She likes the Hunger Games and City of Bones lines much better.

Youngest daughter is not a fan of reading.  She still manages to get up to some.  She has a set of Harry Potter but she has stalled in reading them and probably will not finish anytime soon.

She is a fan of Manga.

Grace and peace to you.

John

How the hell did you read Douglas Adams and remain a Calvinist on the other side?!?

Claire is apparently reading more books than any other grade 1 in her class. Which makes me sad, because I don't think of her as a massive reading fan. She reads. Sometimes at gunpoint. Sometimes quite willingly.

Lately, she stopped reading books. Now? She reads Wikipedia. Mostly entries about dinosaurs, animals, and her favourite TV shows.

I didn't encounter Hitchhiker's Guide until University.  A group of us would sometimes be silly and pass the book around, we'd each open the book to a random page and start read out loud.  A great deal of hilarity usually ensued.

I was trying to think of some of the other books I read in grade school. There was Charlotte's Web, How to Eat Fried Worms (or something like that), Wrinkle in Time, Old Yeller, The Giver, Dragon Song... the author Beverly Cleary pops into my head as being some how significant but I can't think of what she wrote.  It's odd, I recall having to read quite a lot of books in class, but I can't recall most of them. Obviously they didn't make much of an impression.

I was in a grade 4 class today. I was startled as the students had to read each book 3 times. That would have killed me as a kid. She said it builds fluency. Note: they did not have to read them 3x in a row-just 3 times  total. They could alternate books.

Like others I read evrything I could get my hands on Bobbsey twins, Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Swallows and Amazons-the 2 in one books Pinga Decribed, Black Beauty etc. I reall ALL the books assigned to my older sister (2 grades ahead).

Mom was an avid reader. Growing up near a small village she drove us to the next town and pid for library priveleges-and money was quite tight. there. She deemed the village library too small.

I remember reading "the happy hooker" and "fear of flying".

Anyone else remeber the SMA reading program?

Hi chansen,

Nobody said that Total Depravity couldn't be entertaining.  

Grace and peace to you.

John

I read tons and so did my kids. When my son returned from university overseas he brought 11 boxes of books with him. Couldn't leave them behind.

Now I am trying to get through some of his books.

I started reading novels to the kids when they were little. We read charlottes web starting when they were three. My sister, who was a teacher, was a big proponent of reading beyond what they could read themselves to catch their interest.
.
She tells if visiting my kids and reading them a bedtime story.
We used to sort of alternate whose bed and of course there was the pet duck cuddled up as well as the dog.
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She is reading two chapters of Trumpet of the swan and is convinced by my son, that they were short chapters and could she read another. I think she was an hour at least.
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We read the hobbit when my son was seven and daughter four. We were on vacation in Ireland and it was a perfect spot.

They read and reread all the favourites as did I
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The Silver Birch program was in school when my kids were little. Good program of books to read.

And we used to keep a log of our books. How many and what each year.