Your first book?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

You guys & gals have an outstanding memory, I have no clue as to what would have been my first 'book' although I have some vague recollections of small illustrated children books. The first real book I remember reading avidly was Bram Stoker's Dracula when I was 10 or 11. Apart from that I remember spending hours browsing different encyclopedias as a kid (if that counts as reading).

[Darlica]

The memory isn't that outstanding, my mom and I talked about this yesterday and she corrected me, telling me that the first book I read on my own was one about Dinosaurs.

 

[Bluenose]

I have been reading for as long as I remember.  I have no idea what the first book I chose was, there has always been books in my life.  I do however, recall an event during my first year at primary school:  I said something to the teacher about something I had read in The Times that morning.  She said that I could not have read it and that my mother must have read it to me.  I insisted that I did, so she told me to come to the teachers room at lunch time where she took a copy of The Times, opened it at random and said something like "Well Mr smarty pants, read that..."  which I proceeded to do.  Of course there were some words I did not know, but after all these years I can still remember the look on her face.  Priceless!

[Sibling Chatty]

Reminds me of when we moved to Houston.

I did my 4th grade Current Events report from Times Magazine, not the newspaper. My teacher was furious, especially when I asked her if she would have preferred the Wall Street Journal, since the library also had it.

We had a meeting with Mom THAT AFTERNOON.

Mom pointed out that we went to the library twice a week, and that I was NOT restricted to any one section. Oh, and that I read my Dad's college textbooks (sciences, plant taxonomy, etc.) and did just fine... Then she had me read a bit from a book at random from the principal's shelf, and we left.

The teacher had put me in the 'low' reading group because we'd moved there from a small town, without ever testing me. She ALSO managed to have some pretty snotty stuff put on my school records that we had removed 3 years later by way of a lawsuit. (She lost her teaching license over it.) I'm a LOT of things, but NOT 'borderline retarded'.

[pieces o nine]

[SNIP]
She ALSO managed to have some pretty snotty stuff put on my school records that we had removed 3 years later by way of a lawsuit. (She lost her teaching license over it.) I'm a LOT of things, but NOT 'borderline retarded'.

By any chance, Chatty, did your old teacher then move to Nebraska and become a Dominican nun, just in time for me to be switched to parochial school in 4th grade?

[Black Bart]

 

Nobody got my joke...The Marooned Pirate?

I'll get my coat.

[Sibling Chatty]

[SNIP]
She ALSO managed to have some pretty snotty stuff put on my school records that we had removed 3 years later by way of a lawsuit. (She lost her teaching license over it.) I'm a LOT of things, but NOT 'borderline retarded'.

By any chance, Chatty, did your old teacher then move to Nebraska and become a Dominican nun, just in time for me to be switched to parochial school in 4th grade?

Nope.

She married a doctor that later became the 'biggest man' in breast augmentation. And other plastic surgeries. 20 years later, she looked like...yetch, it was disgusting... I recognized her at a meeting of florists and 'hospital auxiliary workers' by her obnoxious voice. The double D cups and the 23 new and different facial features still didn't hide the ugly, though.

She'd have been better off as a nun. The silicone wandered a LOT....

[Griffin NoName]

Nobody got my joke...The Marooned Pirate?

I'll get my coat.

Yeh we did. We were all sniggering at you secretly

[Opsa]

(Posted with Griffin. Sniggering with Griffin, too.)

Eww on the wandering silly-cones.

But hey- Chatty- we had the Childcraft series, too and I very well remember the Children's poetry volume. The one we had had some early illustrations by Walt Disney before he became a big time animator. I think that's where I first read "The Pirate Dom Durk of Dowdee" poem, still my favorite pirate poem.

I rememeber there was a real sad poem in there that fascinated me about a potato that fell in love with the queen of the fairies. Broke my heart. They don't show kids that sort of tragedy nowadays.

[Sibling Chatty]

I remember the potato one!!

The one that drove Mom nuts was "Darling DillikeyDollikey Dinah" (Niece she was to the Empress of China, Fair, I swear, as a morning in May...)

I had it memorized (all 4 pages of it) by the time I was 5, and that was when I still had the lisp, so it was...terminally cute.

We had every series of books ever. How and Why, Childcraft, you name it, they bought it, trying to keep ahead of two kids that fought over reading the newspaper, the cereal boxes, anything...

[Opsa]

("...when Hai Kokalorum [sp?] stole her away!") 

I found an earlier edition of some of the Childcraft books for the Opsalette at a church bazaar some years ago. They have line illustrations and some of the content is different, but some of the poems are the same.

Egads, the poor potato. There was a sad shot of him lying in the ash bin. I'm going to see my Mom this weekend (we're going to the opera). Maybe she'll lend the book to me and I can get a pic of the sad potato in here. Maybe he can be our "utterly defeated" emoticon or something.

[stellinacadente]

I do not recall reading a proper book, but I remember my imagination being very much carried away by Atlas... I would look at the maps and "fly" to the place in the world and imagine what wonders might be hiding there...

I guess that's what got me going on my extensive travel... and ending up living my life abroad

Do Atlas count?

[Opsa]

Of course! I think that's a very interesting influence.

[Sibling Qwertyuiopasd]

I could stare at large maps all day... and complain about the Mercator Projection.

What I'd love is a map that goes from pangea to present day, every so slowly. like, 1million years a minute? That should be slow enough, right?

~Qwerty

[Opsa]

I did an animation of that once for the Smithsonian. It used to play in the Natural History museum.

I still have some animation I helped with playing in the Conquest of Land area there, I think. I'll have to show it to you.