Hoo boy, good question and a long answer...
When I was very young I was part of a trial where it was thought children would learn faster with a slightly altered version of the language. I believe it was called ITA (or some other set of initials). Basically certain letter combinations that might have been confusing such as 'oo', 'ie', 'ee' etc were replaced with extra letters, meaning something like the alphabet I learned to read with had something like 32 characters not the normal 26. I learned, enjoyed then at the end of a year was told that I was going to have to learn to read all over again and gave up. I fell back from my classmates, being left behind. (They all coped I didn't, must be something in the way I learn)
Then my mum took me to an ex-teacher friend who took me under her wing. She loaned me a series of childrens learning books featuring pirates. Simple stories that were beautifully illustrated with pictures of the pirates, their boats and the wonderful creatures that inhabited their worlds: griffens, dragons and the like.
They just drew the reader in and made you want to read the words to know what was going on in the pictures. It worked, Sparked my imagination and from that moment on I don't think there was much choice I jumped from book to book mostly science fiction of Fantasy.
It never did me any harm - by the time I left Junior school (10 years old) I was a good three years above average as far as reading went!
(The books were the Griffen Pirate stories by Sheila McCullagh, featuring pirates like Benjamin the Blue, Roderick the Red and Gregory the Green - hard to find now and exchange hands for quite a bit of cash on ebay)
