First Non Fiction Book

Purwell

Purwell

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Location
North Herts (UK)
What was the first factual or non fiction book that you read?

Mine was Zoo Quest For A Dragon by David Attenborough, when I was about 8 years old.
 

Oh Gosh I can't remember.. probably my mothers' nursing encyclopaedias when I was very little. I was never bought books, but I was always desperate to read the written word , and would literally read anything I could get my hands on...
 

hollydolly said:
Oh Gosh I can't remember.. probably my mothers' nursing encyclopaedias when I was very little. I was never bought books, but I was always desperate to read the written word , and would literally read anything I could get my hands on...
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Same here; I think the first non-fiction I probably read was here and there in a set of general encyclopedia we had.
 
Probably the huge one volume 'Book of Knowledge' my folks had. At the time was reading everything i could get my hands on... When Guadalcanal Diary gave me nightmares Dad built a shelf over a door and put the things he thought too intense for me there. The taboo shelf.

The funny thing was Mom had fussed at my eldest sister about bringing 'Cryptkeeper' and other such comics in the house thinking they would give me nightmares. They never did, it was knowing was knowing that Guadalcanal Diary was historical that madebt nightmare producing.
 
I read some accounts of the Vietnam war in the early '80s, which were some of my earliest non-fiction reads. I seem to remember reading books about mountain climbing in the '70s.

Like @win231, I read Helter Skelter... what else... I read a couple books about the Beatles in the early '70s. I think that was probably my earliest non-fiction read... a book about the Beatles.
 
The oldest non-fiction book I still have from childhood is "The Stars" by H.A. Rey. The copyright page say "Fifth Printing June 1958. If I got it for Christmas that year, I would have been in sixth grade.

Before that, I remember reading a book about dinosaurs that I got from the school library in about third grade. An older girl who helped check books out of the library thought it was too advanced for a poor little third grader. To prove her point she opened the book to a random page, closed her eyes, touched her finger to the page, and said "What's this word," assuming she would have blindly pointed to a big word I couldn't read. But the word under her fingertip was "the," so I got the book. And of course, the only big words in a children's dinosaur book were the names of the dinosaurs, which were the coolest thing about dinosaurs.
 
My mom had a thick book from the USDA about food (nutrition, food groups, etc.). I read it when I was 9 or 10. It was really interesting.

I read biographies of famous people before then - meant for kids. My sister and I also enjoyed reading the encyclopedia from time to time, and the dictionary quite a bit.
 
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Like Feyon, we had that enormous Book of Knowledge which I read all the time. It was great reading with so much information that I soaked up like a sponge. Years later, I bought the complete set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and my son would read it daily. One day, my brother asked to borrow the entire set for his children and I let him use it. Never saw it again. That was per usual whenever I loaned him anything. Never learned to say no. When he died, his wife disposed of everything without even bother to ask if I'd like any of my items returned. Needless to say, we no longer speak.
 
Half Magic (Tales of Magic, #1)

(first published 1954)

I was 8 years old. I couldn't put it down.
It sent me on a long search for other books that I couldn't put down. 🤔 :)
 
A book entitled 'People of the World'....about all the different tribes and cultures in the world. (Assuming of course, that you mean apart from school text books?)
 


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