Moby Dick was my favorite book when I was a young teenager. I tried other Melville stuff but could never get through them. Actually I first encountered Moby Dick when it was read to my 3rd grade class in 1954 by the teacher. We had an hour each of 3 days a week that the teacher used for reading to the class. She was good. No one cut up or went to sleep. Of course class was only a dozen kids at most.
When my younger son was in third grade I read to him. He wasn’t into recreational reading like my older son. I would start a book and then sternly tell him to go to bed. I would sneak down later and find him reading it. I did read all of Huckleberry Finn to him, with full dialect.