House of the Scorpion. Pleasantly surprised to look it up and see it has pretty good ratings
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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Hatchet by Gary Paulsen hit me at the right time as a kid.
I got really stuck into the Artemis Foul books as a teen. I always thought they'd make a great TV series.
The Magician's Nephew
this was my first introduction to the concept of multiple realities and it blew my little 7 year old mind
That's the Narnia prequel, right? It was by far my favourite book in the series as a kid, though I was already familiar with the concept of multiple realities thanks to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I always hoped it would get an adaptation. I haven't reread any of them as an adult, but my memory of it still makes me hope for that one day.
I mainly want to seen a screen adaptation of Jadis causing a ruckus in 1900s London lmao
yeah like at that point as a kid I had the concept of "going to a fantasy land" stories but always sorta applied Neverland logic where the existence of the fantasy land was somehow tied to our own (e.g. via wardrobe door)
The Wood Between the Worlds introduced to me the idea of multiple realities existing completely independently from our own. Ironically, given C. S. Lewis' intent with Narnia, this concept helped me challenge the Protestant beliefs that I was being raised with, and brought me some form of comfort in the idea that maybe I could someday escape Yhwh's reality.
See, child me was NOT thrilled with the idea that my afterlife was going to consist of ETERNALLY WORSHIPPING GOD AND DOING NOTHING ELSE, even if the church claimed that was some sort of unbeatable joyous bliss. After all you can be happy but still be fucking bored and that sounded like just a slightly less shitty Hell to me...
So I actually got really into mysticism as a kid to try to learn how to magic myself into a reality where you got to go to an Aslan's Country style afterlife instead of eternal sitting in church.
This did not go over well with my religious parents, lol. Thankfully I eventually dropped all the magic and religion shit in favor of a love for science. Though I still love mystic aesthetics and high fantasy ofc
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Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I remember correctly is the first novel I remember reading. When we were kids, our parents bought us kid-friendly versions of the novels. I don't really remember anymore if they were condensed versions, or just the same length but with a couple of pictures added per chapter.
The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O Shea. Pure Irish fantasy set in real locations I know in Ireland.
Old Man and the Sea, the first reading assignment I actually enjoyed. Sure it took 5 years after being weaned off of picture books to seriously get into reading, but hey I'm thankful because there's no adventure quite like the kind that comes from a good book.
The 1982 version of "The Amazing Adventures of Hercules". They re-released it in I think 2004, but butchered it.
Cujo
The first book I really enjoyed and got into after high school (as in it wasn't a required reading) was The Hunger Games.
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It was a lithuanian children's book. As far as I know it's not been translated to other languages, it was called "stebuklingas portfelis" by Vytautas Račickas
Can you tell us the story?
It's a slice of life type of book, that tells the life of a kid living in a small village :3.. it's been ages since I read it, so I only remember bits of pieces of various acts, but it goes over various parts of life, like making friends, death of family, encounters with animals and others through the eyes and imagination of a kid.
The name of the book translates to magic briefcase, which comes from the main character lying to his class that his briefcase is magic after they make fun of him cause it's old-fashioned to go to school with one :3
Fox in Socks, Dr Seuss.
It.
The Paul Street Boys. I still remember it fondly!
I never read a book outside of school (which was all fiction books, which I never got into), and then I was gifted Zygmunt Bauman's Globalization: The Human Consequences and loved it and realized non-fiction is a thing
Probably a Hardy Boys book, I used to devour those as a pre-teen.
I read most of Dan Brown's books as a child and I really liked The Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, but the one that marked me the most in my prepubescent years was probably Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho.
The one that really struck me was "Starstreak: Stories from space!" It was a collection of short sci-fi stories including The Haunted Spacesuit and Who Goes There.
Turned me into a lifelong SF reader.
The Mysterious Benedict Society was my childhood. I swear I read the whole series like 8 times. Got me into mystery novels and I've loved them ever since.
Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn
Damn it was good. Opened up the world of Star Wars and reading to me.
Since Disnep declared them null and void I refuse to read anything from the new canon.
When I was a kid I remember reading a Dragonfall 5 science fiction novel and enjoying it.
A few year's later I read To Kill A Mocking Bird for a school assignment and being impressed by Harper Lee's writing style and finding the story and topics really interesting. Around that time I also fell in love with Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
Maniac Magee. I read it again recently and it really holds up well.
It’s basically a book about racism. This orphan kid doesn’t understand why this town is segregated, so he keeps going on the black side of town even though he’s white. He makes friends with all the kids and eventually the adults start to understand they’re not so different. The ending isn’t unrealistic, like the town immediately desegregating or something, but it’s very charming. It’s the little impact that one kid can have on the town that leaves a lasting impression.
I legitimately cried as an adult at one point in the book, because it has a way of getting you so invested in the characters, and I won’t spoil it but something happens to one of the characters. It hits hard.
The Phantom Toll Booth!
Weren't they making a live action movie of that? I swear I saw a teaser trailer for it like almost a whole decade ago but don't remember the movie ever actually coming out.
They did a cartoony one and Maybe it is your lucky day I have found this: https://archive.org/details/the-phantom-tollbooth-1970-dvdrip-x-264-ac-3-i-cmal 😁
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Can't remember which came first, but it was either The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley or The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander.
Star wars bane books and Kevin Mitnik's ghost in the wires. I couldn't put them down.
Soup & Me
Idk about "loved," but I'll put "I can fly" since I remember reading it a lot.
In case others don't know it, it goes a little something like this (each line is a page):
"I can fly
Up, up, up
Down, down, down
Up, up, up
Down, down, down
Up, up, up
Down, down, down
I can fly"
Watership Down
There was one early teen book series that my school library has where it was a town with weird things happening and kids investigate. Twice aliens came to get help from the kids. I can't remember the name of the series though.
I think mine would probably have to be the Darren Shan saga, starting with Cirque du Freak. I think I was 10 when I picked up the first book in the series at a random bookstore in Seoul, and I can't have been older than 12 when I finished the last one. I think that ending was the first time I cried at a piece of media.