Me it was "My Side of the Mountain" and a set of old encyclopedias that a neighbor gave me.

Read My Side probably a half dozen times and lit a fire for the outdoors I still have,

The encyclopedias sparked an interest in knowledge that lead to a career in high tech. Used to just open a random page on a volume and start reading. So much so that a friend's father called me "and encyclopedia of useless knowledge".

I'm sure I am influenced by many, no one stands out.

Aesop's Fables. I give that book to every child in my life.

"Stormy" by Jim Kjelgaard and "Where the Red Fern Grows".

"Fun With Dick and Jane." After I read it, I was no longer illiterate.

My side of the mountain, for sure. What a great book I had forgotten about!

Loved to read. Still do. Learned to read from my mom before I was in kindergarten. Read Dr Seuss too. Curious George and his adventures with the man with the yellow hat. Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Parents had the complete collection of "The Bible Story" by Arthur S Maxwell. Read them cover to cover.

Playboy

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+tall+book+of+make+believe

Even the Chinese counterfeit copies sell for $60.

I could copy my book and sell it as a forgery.



66 years later...
When I make up stories, my grand daughter accuses me of plagiarizing Grimm's fairy tales, which is a compilation of old German folk tales.

I also dreamed of one day having my own My Side of the Mountain.

Loved that book as a boy.

This ^^^^ When I was a very young kid, part of summer Sunday routine was sitting on my grandfather's lap in an Adirondack chair, out under the grape arbor while he smoked his pipe (Prince Albert, in a can) and read the Sunday funny papers to me. I used to be I was fascinated by the fact that those letters were words (if you could read) and I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn't read. When I got to 1st grade, the first thing Mrs. Anderson taught us was how to read. When she taught us that each letter had its own sound and you put them together to form words it was like the sky opened up. It was so simple! Here it was, the solution to one of my biggest, most frustrating puzzles. After that, I just couldn't stop reading.

Got a tiny slice of a side of a mountain. Just need a falcon and a weasel.

Hustler i found in the woods. i was like "WTF is that??"

Chase Olson brought a Playboy to school when we were in the 3rd grade.

Tom Sawyer

The Yearling

Last of the Mohicans

Old Yeller

Ben Lilly

Kit Carson

One that stands out in my mind was Johnny Tremain.

Little Black Sambo

Blaze and the Indian Cave by C.W. Anderson. Amazing illustration done in pencil.

The First book to change me was probably written by Louis Lamour and involved a Sackett. I started reading his books at age 7. My favorite remains The Walking Drum.

Next most influential was Robert Heinlein's Starship Trooper which began my love for science fiction.

The Deep Blue Goodbye by John McDonald

Jim Kjelgaard’s Big Red series and Robin Lee Graham’s “Dove”.

Any of the books by:
James Corbett
J.A. Hunter
Jim Kjellgaard
Jack London
The Black Stallion series
The Big Sky
Zane Gray
Louis L'Amour
Jack O'Connor
Elmer Keith
James Fenimore Cooper
The series of children's books about American patriots and heroes, especially frontier heroes (good luck finding books like this today)
Ed Zern (magazine)
So many others, too many to recall.

I was a prodigious reader and I am thankful for that.

Our three sets of Encyclopedias were probably the most important to me.

The Young Trailers series by Joseph Altsheler---a series of books about the adventures of a boy/young man growing up on the Kentucky Frontier, fighting Indians, living off the land, etc.

read all those also.

Where the Red Fern Grows.

28 minutes too late!
Knew I would be.
Too easy.



A reading fool, I read the cereal boxes, or the air fresheners in the crapped.
But can't really think of A book.

I also read Crazy Horse a million times as well.

A boy's mind could get lost in the freedom that they had before "we" came.

Peyton Place

Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel

World Book. My parents bought the set when I was in grade school, the 1955 version. I would grab one at random and just start reading. That was during the period of a massive increase in technology and 10 years later much of it was obsolete. There was almost nothing there about the space race, for example.

Then I took what would be the most valuable class I ever took. In Jr. high, I took a semester of speed reading. I learned to rip through a novel with very high retention. Most of us don't have that naturally. The class teaches you how to do it. After that, I read almost every book listed in the previous posts. I got to where I liked longer books. I even took on War and Peace and enjoyed most of it, until I got to his philosophy in the last chapters. I got lucky with that one, though. There are a number of translations and by luck I got a good one, especially how it dealt with Russian names.

Read a lot growing up, my mom the school teacher encouraged us every step of the way. She believed most kids would never enjoy reading if forced to read stuff that would not hold them through the minds eye. Some of the old classics are hard reads for a lot of young folks so she said read what holds your interest so that learning wasn't a chore that had to be done. Later with more maturity the more complicated reads were much more doable.

For me it was outdoor stories or science fiction growing up.

Computers and internet have made huge changes, can't imagine trying to get a child started with printed books today.

+1
And every Outdoor Life Sports Afield and Field and Stream that came every month in the early 70’s

Today (or at least when our kids were in school) they had AR (assigned reading)

They had to read so many books in order to achieve a passing grade and get a "prize." The more difficult the book, the bigger the POS prize was.

Out of four intelligent, hard working kids, not ONE will pick up a book to read today.


They absolutely hate reading because of that schidt.

Yep!

My favorite was the "This happened to me" stories.

Where The Red Fern Grows and My Side Of The Mountain were favorites for sure. Also, The Lonesone Traveler by Weldon Hill. The one that really stayed with me was Lost in The Barrens by Farley Mowat. I was able to find copies of each of them and read them again as an adult. I enjoyed them just as much 50 years later.

Old Yeller
Born Free
AVALANCHE!
Where the Wild Things Are
Watership Down
Stranger in a Strange Land
Where the Red Fern Grows
Peach Boy
Webster's Dictionary and Encyclopedia Brittannica

As others have said. My Side of the Mountain and Where the Red Fern grows

Guinness Book of World Records had all sorts of weird and interesting stuff. It was THE authority to settle petty arguments amongst ourselves.

The Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Little Engine That Could

I read it for the first time in 4th grade.

It opened my eyes to what was really possible.

And how can I forget ; The American Boys Handy Book . That was a treasure, and Tom Sawyer too

I had never heard of My Side of the Mountain until this thread. I just ordered the hard cover off of eBay.

Unfortunately, TV has reduced Watership Down to a kids' story instead of what the book is - a comparison of systems of government. That's the problem with so many books that end up on the screen. They change them so much that they're unrecognizable and usually the author's intent is gone.

Did exactly the same, but with the 1958 version. Loved to read, still do.

Great minds...

^^^^^ Rich Kid ^^^^^

Bomba the Jungle Boy. A 12 year old kid, he could kill a puma with his knife. Bomba was a real bad ass.

1960 edition World Book, A-Z

Never cry wolf
White fang
Call of the wild
My side of the mountain
A bunch of different mystery novel series; Hardy Boys...

other than the aforementioned hustler, i was a voracious reader from an early age. some of the earliest stuff i read was tom sawyer and huck finn. i also read everything i could find from louis lamour. robert louis stevenson was another. there are some other no-name books i read that were excellent and all written early-mid 20th century. in my pre-teens i read all the hardy boys and nancy drews and a few more of the same genre. books were huge in my life up until computers came about. i still enjoy reading louis lamour or zane gray but i find that anymore i fall asleep real fast reading books.

Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and encyclopedia

The Iliad and the Odyssey, World Book and Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.


mike r

The first book I recall reading was, Justin Morgan Had a Horse.

The Gadfly

An assumption , I read them on library time as I’m sure many others did .
We lived in a rented chicken house converted to a half azz home .
Our cars came from a local junk yard , though some of them were pretty decent cars for the times .
Dad worked minimum wage most of the time . Sure as hell wasn’t no rich kid .
Kenneth

Holy Moley!

I had this book as a kid and loved it. I read it several times. My somewhat unfeeling mother threw it and my comic book collection away, as well as all my models. Not a lot of fuzzy warm feelings here.

https://www.amazon.com/Carcajou-Rutherford-Montgomery/dp/B000MHTDD6

So you guys really “read” Playboy!? Oh that’s right…. all the articles 😮

We had a ‘56 version of World Book Encyclopedia and like others have said, I’d walk up to the shelf, pick one out I hadn’t read lately and start reading.

A five or ten years later we were driving down to my grandparents home in Monticello and as we drove by a dead “something” in the road my father said, “that was an armadillo”.

I said “It can’t be an armadillo because the Encyclopedia said they’re only located west of the Mississippi.

Later, on the way home, as we approached the dead critter we slowed down to get a good look at it. Sure enough the tail and some of the shell gave it away.

When we got back home I had to show everyone what the Encyclopedia had to say about them. That’s when I learned that you can’t always believe what you read. 😊

I have a few similar family memories, none good for a smile. Quite the opposite, actually. Anyway, I can relate. Sorry to hear.

I reread that book many times.

When I was a young boy I had an Insatiable appetite for reading, anything from the encyclopedia to sci-fi. I can't think of any that "Changed" my life but there where many that influenced it one way of another.

Still to this day I can remember that The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov was some of my favorites. when the TRS80 came along books went to the wayside, then came girls and the IBM PC.

The encyclopedia's were twenty-some year old hand-me-downs. I remember when my parents brought them home. They were exalted and lived on a green shelf adjacent to the wall where our heights were recorded. Many of the maps were about useless with all the 20th Century's geopolitical unrest. I couldn't imagine growing up with the internet. That said, I miss real academic libraries, which there's still no widely available alternative to.

Did you have a strange desire to run away from home and try to live off eating algae?

Too bad they had to make the hunters the bad guys in it.

That's interesting. My daughter was in the same program and she won the award for her grade school for reading the most books and she is still a voracious reader today, but I can also see how it could turn a kid off. They need to learn to love reading for its own intrinsic worth.

A few others I enjoyed: Old Yeller, Savage Sam, Bob, Son of Battle, Silver Chief, Call of the Wild, Where the Red Fern Grows, Tom Sawyer (which is now banned in many schools). I always looked forward to Boys Life coming in the mail and all the gun mags....Sports Afield, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life.

Constant. 'Cept the algae part.

I lost a weekend call in trivia contest because apparently.....the flag of Vietnam had changed since our encyclopedias were published in the 50's.

Sounds like my kind of pal.

The first books I remember reading as a kid were the Time Life Series about cowboys, gunfighters, indian chiefs, railroads, etc. that my grandparents had.

Paddle to the Sea

It was a fairly life changing event.

That'll taint you for sure.

Well....I had a fairly steady tobacco habit by then.

Das Kapital and Mein Kampf for me.

But Where the Red Fern Grows was the first one that came to mind. I wonder if that's been banned from schools cause it uses the word "coon" a lot and undermines the notion of white privilege.

These days, I tend to read books that I should have paid attention to in school, like the Federalist Papers. I couldn't get through that stuff as a kid, it seemed so boring and obtuse, but between the Federalist and AntiFederalist Papers, you can pretty much see how we were supposed to be as a country and how far we've strayed.

I am an avid reader to this day and it all started when I read "The Call Of The Wild", up until then I only read because I had to, but this one time in the school library the librarian made us all pick out a book, I picked up Call of the Wild because I liked the cover art. She noticed I wasn't really reading it so she came over and made me start reading to her. I've been hooked on reading ever since! I was 8 years old.....

Slaughterhouse-Five. My mom was a hardcore bookworm, and was constantly pushing my reading level. I don’t recall understanding any of it, but I was hooked.

Lyle, Lyle Crocodile and Flat Stanley had significant impact as well.

1. Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
2. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
3. The Hunting Rifle - Jack O'Connor
4. See Jane Strip - unknown




GR

That was the one for me also. A perfect example of how anything can be accomplished with the right mindset - a great life lesson in a kids book. The lesson has stuck with me to this day - that and my mother's saying "can't never did anything".

drover

When i was young and staying on Grandads farm without plumbing, Sears Roebuck.

Had some nice pics too.

'True meaning' of Watership Down revealed ahead of TV revival


Readers thought story was cryptic allegory, but its creator was firm: ‘It’s just a story about rabbits’

The new version of Watership Down. The original book’s author Richard Adams came up with the story to keep his daughters happy on a long car journey. Photograph: BBC

Mark Brown Arts correspondent

Mon 10 Dec 2018 01.00 EST

Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 12.49 EDT


It has been endlessly picked apart and analysed and described as an allegory for both communism and Christianity but the daughters of Richard Adams have revealed the true meaning of Watership Down. “It’s just a story about rabbits.”

Rosamond and Juliet, to whom the story was first told to keep them quiet in the car, have spoken ahead of a two-part animation to be shown on BBC1 over Christmas.

The 1978 animated version of Watership Down holds a particular place in the cultural psyche of an entire generation. Everyone remembers the hopelessly sentimental Art Garfunkel theme song. Many will never forget the trauma of witnessing big-eyed bunny rabbits being mercilessly and bloodily slain.

In an interview published in the Radio Times Christmas edition, Adams’s daughters explain how the book, first published when their father was a civil servant in his mid-50s, came into being.

They also address the multiple theories about the true message of Watership Down. “Honestly, the stuff we got through the post from fans about what they think the book is about,” said Rosamond.

Richard Adams pictured in 1974 holding a pet mouse. Photograph: Express/Getty Images

“‘Is Woundwort an allegory of Stalin?’ ‘Is Hazel Jesus Christ?’ It shows that people really connect with the story, they really think hard about it, but it cut no ice with Dad. ‘Rubbish!’ he always said. ‘It’s just a story about rabbits.’”

They recall being six and eight in the mid-60s and on a long car journey to the theatre from London to Stratford-upon-Avon. They pestered their dad for a story and then came: “Once upon a time there were two rabbits called Hazel and Fiver …”

Persuaded by his daughters to put pen to paper, Adams’s book was published in 1972 and won the Carnegie medal and the Guardian children’s book prize.

The 1978 animation, featuring the voices of John Hurt and Richard Briers, was scarringly graphic.

Rightly so, said the daughters. “Daddy didn’t like the way people babied, and pandered to and ‘icky-ised’ children, lying to them about death and so on,” said Juliet. “We’re destroying the environment and endangering all the animals – I think it would be strange to ignore that.”

Producers have suggested the new version, a BBC/Netflix co-production, will be less violent. There will also be more comedy and more prominent female characters.

Nicholas Hoult, who voices Fiver, has predicted people will watch it and cry. “I remember me and (director) Noam (Murro) both crying when we were doing the last scene. We were both hugging as we were crying. I did the take probably 450 times and I cried every single time. I defy anyone not to cry.”

Other voices include Gemma Arterton, Anne-Marie Duff, John Boyega, James McAvoy and Olivia Colman. Sam Smith has recorded a song called Fire On Fire with the BBC Concert Orchestra. The programme will be shown on Saturday 22 December and Sunday 23 December.

The Modern Rifle by Jim Carmichel

The Red Badge of Courage was a good one. Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Black Stallion, Little Britches, Farmer Boy, The Hardy Boys, to name a few more.

Bingo. Read The Walking Drum at my grandma’s house one summer, and was a L’Amour fiend after that. Got a lot of my code from such reading.

Read encyclopedias as well, and a huge stack of National Geographic magazines from the 60’s my maternal grandfather gave me. Plus a lot of outdoor, camping and survival books, too.

I read all of James Fenimore Coopers books. does anyone remember this one by the Annixters?


https://www.amazon.com/Horns-Plenty-Jane-Annixter/dp/B0007DW0IK

My Side of the Mountain, Scouting for Boys, anything Jack London and when I was older New England Grouse Shooting by W H Foster. Later I got into Ray Bradbury books, mainly Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and the Illustrated Man.
The book that finely got my reluctant son to start reading was Hatchet by Gary Paulson.

I see many more mentions of reading the encyclopedia than I would have expected. I thought I was the only one.

From the third grade on, I went to the book shelf and pulled down a random volume of an encyclopedia and thumbed through until I found an interesting article.

All the rest of the class was outside on the playground at recess, and I was sitting on the floor of the classroom reading the encyclopedia.

By the time I reached 7'th grade it was Audel's books on electronics, automobiles, and building trades.

But I have to credit Robert A Heinlein with much of my political leaning. While his stories are fiction, the problems created by oppressive governments and a citizen's response to those problems are very real.

I read "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" in the third or fourth grade. It was my first exposure to Science Fiction, and for me was akin to a shot of crystal meth. I was immediately addicted and have been for life.

Heinlein led to Asimov, Clark, Le Guin, Bradbury, Frank Herbert (Oh my, DUNE), Niven, Vonnegut, Huxley, L R Hubbard, Anne McAffrey, Frederick Pohl, Zelazny, and Michael Crichton. Which of course led to J R R Tolkein, and Terry Brooks, and finally to several years of voraciously devouring anything written by Piers Anthony.

The Loghtning and the Sun
Mein Kampf
March of the Titans
This Time the World

I didn't really start reading meaningful stuff until the 8th grade or so, but have made up for lost time by going at it pretty hard.

Goodnight Moon

Books by Jim Kjelgaard and Louis Lamour impacted me as a kid, along with My Side of the Mountain, Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, and the Little House series.

My side of the mountain; Where the Red Fern Grows, Crazy Horse, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Down the Long Hills, Big Red, treasure island,Old Yeller, at about age 8. Later various Hemingway and Jim Corbett, A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Laughing Boy, Lord Grizzly, When the Legends Die, Call of the Wild, Death in the Long Grass. The Deep. Lonesome Dove. Body Count. Several Joseph Wambaugh books, the Foxfire series. Charles Askins. Jeff Cooper.

One that I just remembered is Space Station Seventh Grade.


It depicts a 7th graders transition to young adulthood to a T.


I recall it being a hilarious book.

Martin Eden by Jack London

I forgot about Big Red also. I read that a few times.


The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton was a very good read as well. Much better than the movie.

Same kind of readers as I am. Boy's Life, Camping et al.

My first LL was the Day Breakers. Orrin and Ty's "going west" portion of the Sackett story. I have read them all and own them all in the Leather Collector set I bought about 10 years ago at which time I read them all again top to bottom. The Walking Drum is truly one of the best.

I also read a lot of Alistar Maclean before I was allowed to ever see such movies! Parents thought it was so great that I read all of the time. I read all of the WW2 classics like Doolittle's Raid, Flying Tigers and later Leon Uris' Battle Cry and such.

Probably these right here.
Pictorial Encyclopedia of American History
Each volume covers a different era or event of American History, with big illustrations and a description of each event per page. They were bought for my older brother, but as a kid, I devoured them. The illustrations captured my imagination, drawing me into reading the stories.
Most probably the reason I’m a History Nerd now, although Dad certainly influenced my development. American History was a passion of his as well.
That led to this,
Golden Book of the Civil War
Dad bought me this at the Gettysburg Cyclorama book shop when I was 8, in 1973! I plum wore the thing out, but found another copy a a used book sale recently. It’ll go to my first grandchild.
Probably oughtta mention Jack O’Conner’s “Rifles and Shotguns” . That fueled my enthusiasm towards things that go BANG, which has been another passion of mine.
7mm

Had to hunt for it
Jack O’Conners Rifles & Shotguns
I had this book as an adult too, and Ben wore it out. Probably destroyed his future like it did mine!
I’m gonna order another copy to put with the others for my grandchildren! Gotta start them young!
7mm

I read that cover to cover about 6 times, I was 12 years old. Great book by Jack O'Conner.

It was this childhood book, that led to my military career as a Naval Aviator . . .

+1

Read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich way back in hi school about 1972. Later read The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Both made a BIG impression on me.

Good books!

Great book for a young kid who’s cutting his or her teeth. Illustrations showing how the different actions work, lots of history and personal anecdotes, and a seven lesson shooting course!
Like the first books, this belonged to Dave, who’s 6 years older than me. God only knows how many times I read it cover to cover, not to mention in depth study of the shooting course.
I practiced everything with a .22, applying what seemed to work and going over and over it!
Dave is a gun nut too, and when I got married I snatched it for my own. Ben was probably 7 or 8 and discovered it. He read it all the way through several times as well. Like I said, it will destroy a youngster for life!
I’d love to know what became of it
I only hope that my grandkids can grow up with the freedom and the personal responsibility environment I had, and can grow up to be hunters and gun nuts too!
Only that stuff about the .270 never rubbed off, thank God. For all Jack’s smarts, he shoulda known that the .30-06 is the top of the heap. Compare the .50 BMG, and the .223 Remington, the top military rounds. A scaled up ought six, and a scaled down 06!
7mm

Kids these days will never know, without playboy we would have had suffer with the sears catalogue underwear ads and half naked villagers in national geographic.

Jim Kjelgaard, Jack London, Zane Grey, The Virginian, Mark Twain and many others. Once got banned from the school library in eighth grade, because I read whatever interested me in there and ta hell with assigned reading and diversions like homework.

Patrick McManus humor

I was prob’ly nine or ten, in the old railway yard with the parked steam engines waiting to be scrapped we had built a club house in the rafters of one of the deserted rail yard buildings. Some kid had bring in girly magazines, no idea what England had in the 60’s, most likely tame compared to today.

I’d look at em but really didn’t see the point, but them one day it came over me like a wave, them women were sexy. The first time testosterone kicked in.

Patrick McManus humor

Dang! That was the first book I ever took out of the library to read. I was in 1st Grade. Loved it!

Where the red fern grows

Never cry wolf

and of course, anything by Dr. Seuss!

Catch 22. Lol.

Old Yeller
Little Arliss
Dusty
The Incredible Journey
All of Kjelgaard’s books
Where The Red Fern Grows

Later in high school, I read Res Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy. Pretty eye opening.

John Wyndham - Middlewich Cuckoo
MR James Ghost stories
George Orwell Animal Farm
George Orwell 1984
Neville Shute No Highway
Neville Shute So Disdained
Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
CS Forester Brown on Resolution
Houseman Rogue Male
Jim Corbett any of man eating tiger and leopard books but especially the Rudrarpryag Leopard

How many of you bookworms did reports for other kids?

Had a pretty good side business going until the english lit teacher lady caught on.

For today's youth Playboy is the pornhub of yesteryear.

Many seem to be influenced by murderpedia.org too.

Another book I must have read over 1/2 dozen times, starting in Jr. High was All Quiet On The Western Front. Soon after I read it the first time Remarque died.

I read this entire thread and I don’t think anyone mentioned Hatchet or the river by Gary Paulson. Two great adventure books for a teen growing up. I really wish I could remember the other book from about the same time that Hatchet came out. About a bush pilot and a boy that crashed in Canada or Alaska and they had to canoe down a river

White Fang
Call of the Wild

Pretty heady stuff for an urban Brit kid.

Hot Rod and Mad magazines.

This. I was going through and seeing how many folks said My Side of the Mountain, which was a great book and in my top 2 from my childhood. It’s second to Hatchet. I still read both of them to my kids every now and again.

I have not read Hatchet, I will try and find that one and read it.

Where the Red Fern Grows
My Side of The Mountain
The Grey Wolf

them chines brothers , one in a oven one in a lake etc....my side of the mt was the 1st think i can remeber reading ...

You won’t be disappointed, even today.

Battle Cry by Leon Uris.


mike r

there was a series like hardey boys .... but si fi and rocket stuff

You must have missed my post, However, I mentioned that it was the book that got my son into reading.

I almost forgot, Paddle to the Sea. A little Indian boy in Minnesota has a little toy canoe about 12 inches long. He puts it in the creek. This is the story of the little wooden canoe as it floats down the creek into a river, and then, into the Mississippi. Eventually the little canoe makes it all the way to New Orleans.

This is a great book.

Yes it is and still out there and NOT PCed up !

I was born and raised in the sagebrush, cows and calves...life was beyond boring, reading was the escape. Along comes the Saturday Evening Post and the stories written by Guy Gilpatric...the hero, Colin Glencannon, a Scottish marine engineer and his series of adventures. I was hooked. I eventually worked my way from the sagebrush to the coast and on to tugboats, living the dream. Thank you Mr Gilpatric.

Bowser the hound, lion hound , jimmy skunk,

I must be the only sumbish here that read the Will James books and wanted to grow up to be a cowboy.....

That is a great book. There was a short film made of it too, I believe.

.

You're correct. I seem to remember seeing it Sunday nights on Disney.


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060810/

many...
but "The boy that cried Wolf" comes to mind in our present environment...

I am sure that there are othe, better ones..

I was 12 when I read "About Face" - Col. Hackworth

Big Red
Hardy Boys Mysteries
Moby Dick
I read a TON of Stephen King as a little kid - probably why slasher/horror films do nothing for me today
Old Bowhunting magazines from my dad
Varmint Hunter's Digest
Alas Babylon
Russell Annabel

Basically read everything I could get my hands on and then that waned as I got into my 30's. I have a bookshelf full of things I want to read and haven't yet.

Great thread Steve - brought back lots of memories.

My copy of "My Side of the Mountain" was so worn out, it was fairly obvious it was one of my go-tos.

Others were:
Robinson Crusoe
Swiss Family Robinson
Outdoor Bushcraft
Red Badge of Courage
Anything by Hemingway, Ruark, and Twain

Like many others, Encyclopedia Brittanica and I were constant companions also.

One thing I used to do as a kid at bedtime was take my dictionary and open it to a random page, stick my finger on a random word, and read it. Would do that several times a night.
You probably would never know that by reading some of my sophomoric posts, right Old_Toot? (Maybe I should stick with emulating Enoch Powell.)

And of course - National Pornographic was probably the most life changing.

Big +1 . . . I just split up my childhood collection (dozens of Hardy Boys books) with my two grandsons for last Christmas.

+1. I learned that you can make a tiger run so fast around a tree that it will turn into butter. Huh????

Still have my hard-backed childhood copy stashed away somewhere. I may be breaking the law by the mere possession of it.

Don't know if it changed my life, but I sure did love "Where The Wild Things Are".

Uncle Remus and The Tar Baby.

On a more metaphysical or spiritual examination, The Velvetine Rabbit.

I'll tell you, the book Curious George and The Electric Fence. Was for me, a real eye opener.

Not a book,but I waited for each issue of Boys Life to be delivered.Comic Books were my main staple until about 9 or 10 years old.I read all the Hardy Boys books,Treasure Island,Moby Dick.I was pretty sure I was going to be a Pirate when I grew up.

Outdoor life and Field & Stream..... not most people's idea of kids books , but think about it.....

Because of this thread I ordered Canoeing with the Cree.

Maybe if I'd read the book as a boy I'd be enthralled. Not so much in my dotage.

Peter Capstick, and Jack O' Connor. Love their work

These were my father's books and i thoroughly enjoyed reading them at a ripe young age. They should be required reading in public schools everywhere

Hustler and Swank.

Well, OK. Chester the Molester was a classic.

The Little Red Hen.

Huntsman 22, No, you're not alone. Will James was my great uncle by marriage, he married my great aunt Alice Conradt. I was force fed "Smoky" from knee high to a grasshopper....didn't do any good, I still went to sea as soon as I could. grin.

Moby Dick gotcha, huh?

Winter Danger and Lone Hunt by William Osteel. Great kids books about hunting, trapping and Indian fighting in the pioneer days.

Another strong vote for The Young Trailers series by Joseph Altsheler. I must admit, I still pick it up as a great escapist tool.

"Mister Rifleman"

"Gunsmith's Apprentice"

Pretty close for me.

Still my favorite book of all time is "To Tame a Land" by Louis L'Amour but everything that he wrote was good. I read it 42 times at last count. The Kilkenny books were good. Zane Grey's "Rogue River Feud" 'cause I grew up on the banks of the Rogue fishing some of the same waters he wrote about. My grandfather worked on the pack train that carried him into his cabin at Winkle Bar. The part at the start about black speckled trout .. got me hooked you might say.

Heinlein was good ... for me it was Tunnel in the Sky ... "beware the stobor!!" Much of it was over my head the first 4-5 times I read it.

I like sci fi a lot. In older days my favorite was Poul Anderson. Lot of his stuff was somewhere between James Bond and western .. just set in space. Andre Norton. Later CJ Cherryh, especially her Chanur books. Pournelle/Niven "The Mote in God's Eye". The Sword of Truth series is pretty good but is a few months' project. David Brin's stuff is good ... he wrote The Postman which the Costner movie was based loosely on. The movie script played fast and loose, the book is pretty darn accurate so far as geography ... roads and rivers I grew up on, the Oregon State University campus and computing center where I did a lot of my undergrad work played a big part. And Tom Petty's character, if present, was so minor I missed him in the book. Brin's stuff is like Cherryh's stuff .. very intricate plots and characters, hard to track sometimes.