Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The books you read when you were young...

Hi,
I thought it might be fun to ask if you remember the first couple of books you read when you were really really young that changed how you saw or felt about the world. Now that you look back, do you think you were too young to read it? What impact do you think it had on you?

So, I think I'm asking for when you're old enough to understand what you read and the deeper meaning, etc. Or you can interpret my question any way you would like to answer it.

I'll go first:

I remember being just wow'd reading the first book of the Narnia series "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and loving it. I also recall reading "The Last Battle" and realizing they had died. I remember feeling breathe-less about the whole thing and feeling wonderful, fanciful, it would be to go to such a place.

The other one is "Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell. I think I read this too young. Even now, when I think of how I felt at the time, I still feel the "great expanse", smallness, the extreme isolation, the bravery, an emptiness, the silence, the sounds of the wild/ocean waves. Not sure if the book "made me" think about existence or perhaps I was already at the stage of thinking those thoughts. I think this one kept me dreaming and re-thinking about the story for a long time. It was haunting.

How about you?