Your first author

[pippinandtog]

Which author first induced in you a love of books?
Mine would be Enid Blyton : full of adventure and magical worlds, also, there was often a character who travelled around with a circus, and I quite fancied that idea, not least because that character was always a bit scruffy and didn't have to have a wash, which seemed ideal to me.

Meg and Mog and Ant and Bee when I was really little.

Jill Murphy's Worst Witch books. We played Maud and Mildred for years. It's probably why I became a goth when I was a teenager .

I'm not entirely sure who dealt the first or winning blow, so I'll have to submit a trio: Enid Blyton, Michael Crichton, Richard Adams.

Between them all, they turned me into a voracious reader.

Joan Aitken, especially the wolves of willoughby chase, although all that she wrote, fabulous stories that I read and reread as a child.

Then Agatha Christie and PG Wodehouse as a teen (with illegal forays into Harold Robbins when I could get my hands on them!!)

Although I would read anything I could as a child, always in a corner reading

Enid Blyton I suppose for me and then I just worked my way through the library. There used to be a library in our little village (hard to believe when even major libraries are under threat nowadays) I used to go three or four times a week by myself and stay for hours even though I'd only be five or six at the time. Such happy memories of those times.

Honour Arundel. I loved the high house

Enid Blyton, CS Lewis and Joyce Lancaster Brisley of Mily Molly Mandy fame.

I read a lot as a child, but most of what I read as a younger child was chosen by the adults around me, rather than being my choice.

The first author whose work I really loved is Madeleine L'Engle. I started with A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, then moved on to the novels about the Austin family. I especially enjoyed the occasional cross-over of characters. Reading her work also marked the stage at which I was beginning to grow beyond "children's fiction".

I also enjoyed everything I read by John Christopher.

The Enid Blyton series I enjoyed the most was the one where each novel was titled 'The of Adventure'.

Alison Uttley: first Little grey rabbit then the Country child.
Honourable mentions to Ursula Moray Williams and Dick King Smith.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Little House series. It made history exciting and adventurous but also something real and domestic that was experienced by ordinary people.

And The Phantom Tollbooth by Justin Norbert because it was so imaginative and magical.

Jane Austen. Sounds a bit pretentious now but I wasn't a big reader at all when I was a child. I watched the first episode of Pride and Prejudice (the Colon Firth one) when I was 15, picked up the book the day after and read it in a day. Never looked back!

I got the Ladybird Snow white and rose red book as a prize in infant school - that was it- I became totally obsessed by Tales from different countries, Enid Blyton's Tales of the Arabian nights, Hans Christian Anderson stories etc. Still love Tales. All borrowed from the Library or bought at Jumble Sales with pocket money - no children's books bought in our house.

Ursula Moray Williams - Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse, Gobbolino the witch's cat and (oh joy!) The adventures of the little wooden horse and Gobbolino where they have to join forces to "rescue" Sootica-- so exciting, made me cry read them when I was about 6 .

I loved The High House trilogy, onlyslightly. I've rarely come across anyone else who read them. Loved their believable story.

My very first favourite was "No-one at Home" by Christine Pullein Thompson who wrote horse books. But this was a book about kids in London having a mum who doesn't come home to their flat from her job in the laundrette. They have an adventure travelling across London to go to their Granny's. I loved that it was set in London, a perfectly plausible adventure and it was the first book I remember reading by myself.

Enid Blyton, then Richmal Crompton and the lovely William, then there were a series of books about twins; the Eskimo twins, the Dutch twins etc, all stereotyped but then I didn't know about things like that at the age of about eight. I also loved Ricki Tickie, Tavi by Rudyard Kipling which was read to us in school.

I loved reading puddle lane books with my dad growing up, and asterix and obelix but truly a pivotal book for me was A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. I got it from the mobile library and I felt liberated, it was another world and I felt I'd been there. I read it all the time. On the look out for puddle lane books.

Dorothy Edwards. I was given one of her 'naughty little sister' books for Xmas when I was seven by my head teacher. I begged my mum for more so she bought me a box set with about 8 books in. When these had been read I loved reading so much my nan bought me a collection of secret seven books, I read them all in 2 weeks and instantly became an Enid blyton fan too. I loved reading as a child then stopped in my early twenties. I've inky just started reading again now :(

Enid Blyton

Then Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier

Enid Blyton, Elinor M Brent-Dyer, Laura Ingalls Wilder, LM Montgomery, EE Nesbit, CS Lewis, Roald Dahl, Noel Streatfeild, Beatrix Potter plus things like Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High, the Babysitters Club.

I remember when my twin and I turned 5 we got Little House in the Big Woods and one of the Nancy Drew books as presents (the one with a scary doll with drugged needles in it) and those were our first 'grown-up' books.