The Phantom Toll Booth!

Weren’t they making a live action movie of that? I swear I saw a teaser trailer for it like almost a whole decade ago but don’t remember the movie ever actually coming out.

When I was very young, 10 or under, there was a book I read that I remember almost nothing about, just that there was a kid who found or built a bunch of robots to do various things. The only robot I really remember is the one made to row a boat, named (appropriately) Row-bot. It had a bell built in that would ring every time it made a stroke. At the end of the book all the robots have to leave the boy, and the last scene is him watching them rowing away and hearing the bell fade into the mist. That I even remember any of the book tells me I really liked it.

Besides that, I was gifted a copy of Ender’s Game for my 15th or 16th birthday. I really loved it and it was the first time I can remember being really blown away by a plot twist.

Edit: The first book may be Andy Buckram’s Tin Men.

Something by Brian Jacques when I was ten. Probably Long Patrol or Mossflower. turned me from a book hater into a book fiend. Like, literally pissed off my parents because I would read at night instead of sleeping.

Can’t remember which came first, but it was either The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley or The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander.

The Black Cauldron Series.

Redwall, by Brian Jacques I think. Basically medieval fantasy drama but with woodland animals if I remember properly. I loved the whole series, great books when I was a kid.

The first of the Dragonlance books. I loved that trilogy so much as a kid. With Raistlin and Caramon, Tika, and Riverwind, Goldmoon… Thirty years later I still remember it.

Redwall by Brian Jacques. Introduced me to so many things like the fantasy genre, multi-book series, deep worldbuilding, archetypal races and probably way more. The food descriptions also stand out in my memory.

Haven’t gone back to see how it stands up but I highly recommend it for kids whose reading level is improving and want to move up a tier in length/difficulty.

Fox in Socks, Dr Seuss.

Redwall by Brian Jacques was probably the earliest one I remember loving.

Soup & Me

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

A Wrinkle in Time.

Picking just one book is really unfair as I fell in love with various books at different times of my life.

But to answer your question, the very first book I remember falling in love with as a little kid is… two books. Jules Verne ‘Michel Strogoff’, and Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost World’ which I read in French back then as ‘Le monde perdu’.

But I insist, this is absolutely unfair to the many other books I’ve loved and still love to this very day :p

The Paul Street Boys. I still remember it fondly!