Fantasy with Friends: Early Memories

Time for another Fantasy with Friends discussion post! As ever, the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this week’s is about what got you interested in the genre: Is there a particular fantasy that got you interested in the genre? Do you remember any of the earliest fantasy books you read? Given that my mother’s a fantasy reader as well, I think fantasy stories were just stories to me, rather than thinking in terms of genre. Lots of the books I had as a kid were fantastical in some way, some more so than others; I read a lot of Enid Blyton’s work, for instance, where the Famous Five books are not fantasy, but she also wrote The Magic Faraway Tree. I know I had a box set of the Narnia books, too, with cover art that I personally prefer to all the others I’ve seen, but which hasn’t been reused (alas). That said, I know that after I read The Hobbit, I pestered Mum for more like it, by which I think I meant fantasy (and she certainly took it to be so). She didn’t let me read The Lord…