My Favorite Childhood Book

Book Questions*: Favorite Childhood Book

I didn't read much as a child - most books were read to me: by my mother or by teachers at a very young age. I remember going to the town library and seeing books that I thought might interest me, but I don't remember actually taking out any.

It wasn't until I was in junior high school that I started a membership in a science fiction book club and ordered books, but even then I didn't finish reading any of them. Several times I tried to get through Foundation by Isaac Asimov, but I didn't make it through a full read-through until adulthood.

Then in high school, in my junior year, I finally made a breakthrough. At the high school library I found The Bedford Incident by Mark Rascovich, a speculative-fiction thriller so exciting that I couldn't put it down, and I finished reading my first book. In it, a reporter is allowed aboard a U.S. submarine hunter during a training exercise at sea that is drawn into an increasingly dangerous nuclear showdown with a Soviet submarine, and there is no escape for the reporter and no turning back for the crew of the destroyer or the submarine.

That remains my favorite childhood book, although it arrived late in my "childhood." I will forever remember it for awakening my love for books and reading.

When did you first start reading, and what was your favorite childhood book?

*Inspired by "55 questions about reading"

(c) 2015. Alan Eggleston. All Rights Reserved.