The Neverending Story

When a lonely boy named Bastian ducks into a bookshop to escape bullies, he takes an old book from its owner and hides in his school's attic to read it. The story inside is set in Fantastica, a realm of unicorns, dragons, gnomes and will-o'-the-wisps that is slowly being eaten away by the Nothing, while its ruler, the Childlike Empress, lies ill. A boy warrior named Atreyu is sent to find a cure. Michael Ende's fantasy novel, written in German as Die unendliche Geschichte, was translated into English by Ralph Manheim and later adapted for film and television.

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com founder Yaro Starak counts it among the books his mother read to him as a boy, and says it mattered to him again as an adult.