[Starstruck]

Read all the books you mentioned, plus there was a series of novels about a baseball team. Then I found science fiction.

[SamAdams76]

I should also mention that I discovered most of those books on my own when I was growing up. In other words, they weren't assigned by teachers.

Even back in the 1970s, the "children's books" provided in schools were pretty lame. Dr. Suess, "Where The Wild Things Are", "Jonathon Livingston Seagull" and other crap like that. It's really up to the parents to instill good reading habits with their children. My mother would take me to the library every Saturday morning and make me borrow at least four books every time. Eventually I discovered there was a lot in those stacks worth reading and I've been reading books on a regular basis ever since.