I don't actually remember many books from before I learned to read for myself. I do have a dim memory of a book about a little girl who tried to keep a lion in a basement apartment, published sometime in the 1920's. It was a cute little story, but what I liked best was the stylized artwork. I must have been learning to read already at that time, because I was surprised to discover that the word "fruit" had a silent i in it.
The earliest books I can remember clearly are
- My Bumper Fairy Book, a cheap reprint of popular fairy tales with (as I remember it) illustrations not much better than the average dollar-store coloring book.
- My Book of Make Believe, a collection of different fairy tales with an attractive format: Tall, narrow pages and colour pictures (I think). I remember discovering this in my elementary school library and checking it out as often as I could.
- A hard-back turn-of-the-century reprint of Grimm's Fairy Tales in tiny print, with no illustrations. I was a fluent reader by that time. I think "Iron John" was my favorite story in the book.
I seem to detect a trend here...
Anyway, by 6th grade I had discovered science fiction and began reading books faster than I could fix them in memory.
edited to add: And how could I have forgotten John Martin's Big Books For Little Folk? My parents picked up a set of seven at the Alameda Flea Market one fine day when I was possibly seven or eight. I kept them until I moved out of my parents' house to marry. Didn't find out until a couple of years ago that they were a collection of annuals, and that "John Martin" was a psuedonym for - I don't know who now, but he was a friend of Mark Twain's, I think. The original copyrights range from 1919 to 1929 or so.
gently feral