I was reading Heinlein and Fred Brown at age 7. My mother had conniptions. My father said, if she can read it and tell me about it with a degree of comprehension, she has the right to read it herself. And he always explained why discretion was the better part of valor when out in the world, even though it was a mostly conservative world, back then.
They were wonderfully subversive writers, weren’t they? Libertarians before anyone even wrote down the word.
I am glad to see by the many postings that I was not a loner when it came to reading at an early age. Great. To me reading is one of the greatest things going, maybe eclipsed by writing since we would have nothing to read if it wasn't for writers!:)