I don’t remember any books being read to me. I read to my daughters, beginning with Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, Peter Rabbit, Where the Wild Things Are, and other classics.
How about you? What books do you remember being read to you?
First Book You Remember
Comics I Don't Understand 
I doubt anyone has real memories of being read to. I read a lot of Harry Potter to my daughter. She may still remember my Hagrid voice, an incomprehensible growl that she utterly hated. It may have motivated her to start reading early on her own, to shut me up.
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The first children’s book I remember is The Little Engine That Could. But as far as actual memory of being read to, that would be the novelization of the E.T. movie. Which is strange, because I would have been 8 at the time, and I already knew how to read. Maybe mom just wanted to read it to me in case it had objectionable content.
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I don’t remember books that were read to me, either, although I know they were. What I do remember is that in 1966 we spent a year in Bonn, Germany. My dad had a Fulbright grant to study there. I was supposed to start Kindergarten that year, and my parents were advised to send me to “Mrs. Day’s school”, so they did.
The first day, she called me up to her desk and asked if I knew how to read. I did not, although I think I knew my alphabet. So she opened a book and pointed, saying, “That word is ‘look’.” Fun With Dick and Jane!
That woman could teach a pig to sing. By the end of the year–attending half days–she’d taught me to read at a third-grade level and I knew the times tables up to 12×12. Just a wonderful educator.
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We need “like” buttons for these comments.
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I also do not have memories specifically of being read to, but do remember having some experience of some kids books before the time I was reading on my own. We certainly had some Dr Seuss. Also one book from that aforementioned series about Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel – which I was a bit surprised to find out later was no longer the standard term for the class of backhoes and excavators. Also “Rootie Kazootie and the Polka Dot Pineapple Pie”, featuring Poison Zanzaboo.
More advanced books like the Mushroom Planet series and Dr. Doolittle were probably after I was reading on my own, along with Heinlein juveniles (and Asimov’s Lucky Starr) and the Oz series, which our public library had the wisdom to shelve in one place even though there were different authors after Baum.
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Ok, so we do apparently have a way to like comments. I don’t see it, though. (using Safari on an iPad)
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I remember having the Winnie-ther-Pooh books read to me, but most of all I remember my Dad reading the newspaper comics to me, and teaching me to read in the process. At age 3 I was in hospital for several days, during which Dad stopped in every evening after work with the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator in hand. He knew I wanted to know what Uncle Wiggly was up to.
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I remember “Are You My Mother?”, “The Little Engine that Could”, lots of Dr. Seuss… All of which I read to my kids…
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Patrick, I think “like” is an email function. I’m replying to this on the web, but will then go and click “Like” in my email notification. I’ve never tried that for some reason!
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Hmm, clicking “Like” took me to Patrick’s comment (amid the rest of the comments), NOT to “Add a Comment”. I scrolled down to that, wrote something like what I’m writing here, clicked “Comment” and…it just spun. Methinks (not for the first time) that WordPress doesn’t have very good QA.
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phsiii, Got it. Never used the email function, I generally choose to not be notified. Thanks!
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I have fond memories of my father reading The Marvelous Land of Oz (not to be confused with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) to me (and I assume my sisters).
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I remember my dad reading to me, continuing long after I could read, mainly because we both enjoyed the routine. Specifically i remember him reading “Paul Bunyan” and Dr. Seuss books at an early age. Then, later, chapter books like the Dr. Seuss books where my dad would read until one of us was tired. It always ended with him telling me what page we were on and it was my duty to remember the page number the following night. I don’t think I ever messed up although maybe I did once or twice. Tried to do the same thing with my four boys but the interest varied from kid to kid.
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Liking of Comments is turned on, for a trial.
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I remember vividly being read “Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer” and “Jim Knopf und die Wilde Dreizehn” by Michael Ende. My mother often tasked my older sister to read to me. I was so captivated by the story about the boy Jim Button, Luke the Engine Driver and the semi intelligent locomotive Emma, that I went to my sister with the book while she was lying ill in bed! No respect for someone trying to get some sleep to let the body cure itself, passing the Twilight Valley to rescue the princess Li Si from the dragon Mrs. Grindtooth while playing with my model train was more important.
It must have been my second time being read the book. Fond memories.
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I have successfully rocked the boat. My work here is done.
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As a child, I was not read to, but when I learned to read, “Heidi” was my favorite.
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Now that someone else mentioned it, I can remember being very sad from “Are you my mother?”. We had lots of Dr. Seuss and Little Golden Books. I learned to read early, and while I don’t remember what other books were read to me, I do have a vivid memory of my dad reading the comics in his bedroom, but he wasn’t reading out loud, and I asked him about it. He said he was reading to himself. What a revelation! It hadn’t occurred to me that you could read silently. I’ve been carrying a book with me everywhere ever since. First it was mysteries like the Encyclopedia Brown books, and Nancy Drew, then fantasy like Narnia and Lord of the Rings. I still mostly read fantasy and sci-fi.
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The first book I remember is “The Golden Egg Book” because it was our favorite book (my sister and I) and we asked for it over and over.
It has the best ending of any book I ever read.
“And so the bunny and the duck were friends. And nobody was ever alone again.”
How could you possibly improve on that ending? “Nobody was ever alone again.”
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The Hobbit and also the Moomin books
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I know my mom read to us most night before we went to bed. We had a lot of Dr. Seuss and other similar books and Little Golden Books. Also we had two 4 book sets of Disney books that she read from. She would also read longer books sometimes that would take multiple nights.
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I really don’t have memories before age 5, as I was the oldest I didn’t get that reinforcement of earlier events. When I was learning to read, it was in the See Spot Run days. The closest I remember to books being read to me were the ones on Captain Kangaroo.
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Last One In Is A Rotten Egg, by Leonard Kessler. A story about kids learning to swim
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Born in 1955. Don’t specifically recall being read TO very much, but I must have been to acquire early familiarity with Dr. Seuss and Babar the Elephant. Recall paging through and knowing the stories as I looked at the pictures.
Reading was encouraged and sold by example. My parents were big readers, and my siblings and myself were plentifully supplied with literature of all sorts, including Scholastic book club (our own picks), a shelf of matched children’s classics (sanitized and shortened a bit for young readers), and our own cards for the local library. Also kid magazines (“Jack and Jill”, “Humpty Dumpty”, “Calling All Girls” (my sister), the summer edition of “Weekly Reader”, and maybe “Highlights for Children”, although that might have been only in waiting rooms). And of course grown-up books all over. Much that was unenticing, both fiction and non-fiction, usually without pictures, but also James Bond and other paperbacks with racy covers. They were faintly taboo, but never expressly forbidden or out of reach. Tentatively skimmed for hot parts, but I somehow never got into them.
Early on I went through several volumes of Doctor Dolittle from the library, but somehow skipped over Hardy Boys for Sherlock Holmes. The grade school library had annotated editions of “Around the World in 80 Days” and “Moby Dick”, which defined arcane words and explained stuff. To this day, on those rare occasions when classically inclined, I seek out heavily annotated editions. Got “Pride and Prejudice” and spent a night reading JUST the notes. Did you know rich folk would not only have a decorative hermitage on their grand estates, but an actual live-in hermit doing hermit stuff full time?
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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Dad would come in and read to me before bedtime.
I guess before that would be Goodnight Moon, Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings, The Snowy Day.
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My father read to me and my siblings just about every night when we were young. I know he read Winnie the Pooh and other books we had. I think there was a book of fairy tales. And lots of library books—just about anything by Dr. Seuss.
One book we had was “365 Bedtime Stories”, a story for each day of the year. As an adult, I found a copy of that book at a used book sale, which I bought for 50¢. I shared it with my siblings; there were a number of stories that we all remembered. But what struck me is how short those darn stories were, mostly less than one page each. I think what Dad probably did was read “today’s” story and then a chapter from Pooh or a Seuss book. The bedtime stories were just too short to be the entire session.
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also The Phantom Tollbooth
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I have memories of being read to, but for a very odd reason. I could read before I was two, and also don’t remember anything before the age of two, so the only “reading to me” memories are from significantly more advanced books than the usual Dr Seuss or Mother Goose.
One of the bits I remember was probably from a book aimed at teenagers or young adults (I think it was something my mother was reading anyway), and involved a girl named Chris being cursed to turn into a chrysanthemum plant. For more than thirty years now I’ve been trying to figure out what that story was, but every time I try to look for it it comes up blank – and half the people I ask says “wow, that sounds super familiar and I feel like I’ve read it, but can’t place it!”.
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“When I was down beside the sea a wooden spade they gave to me. My hole was empty like a cup, in every hole the sea came up till it could come no more. …”
“A Child’s Garden of Verses” – Robert Lewis Stevenson
When I was born mom sent dad out the next day (of course I was born at around 10 pm as I am still a late night person) to buy a copy of the book for me. I still have the book and still remember this and other poems from the book by heart – “How would you like to go up in a swing into the sky so blue, I think it ever the pleasantest thing a child can do…” another favorite
We bought a copy of same for each of our niblings – either when they were born or when they came home from adoption. (My older nephew is getting married this coming summer – perhaps there will actually be a next generation of the family and I will buy each of them a copy also.)
Books are one of the major things which drew husband and me together. We have 8 -6 ft tall bookcases as well as 3 shorter ones. Plus more books stored all around the house (and several sets of magazine collections – BBC History, Smithsonian, various crafts we work in… Oh,forgot the books outside in his garage woodshop.
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Wendy – I switched from fiction as a child (Nancy Drew, Honeybunch (and some books Norman), the Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, Sue Barton… Louisa May Alcott is my favorite author. I have multiple copies of several of her books and have been to her house in Massachusetts several times as a child and several times with my husband.
Husband did not enjoy reading as a child, but as grew up he became a big reader also – I know more about James Bond than any woman should know as same was/is his favorite. He reads non-fiction, as well as fiction, about the 1700s. (Related to the same reason as our being 1770s reenactors.)
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