Well…. This is a bit of a challenge for me to answer because I didn’t really read until I was around 11 -12 easy reader chapter books were things I tended to look at the length of and go… “Well nope” I started reading Garfield comic strips, and then went straight into Series and Formula Books. One of the major motivating factors in reading for me (because I was so bad at it) my mom would buy me pretty much whatever I wanted, and I wanted things I could collect. My “Easy Readers” was a subscription to “Wildlife Fact Files” which sent me a set of cards to read every month. From there I was sucked into the Animorphs vortex, and for the most part jumped straight into adult books. Mercedes Lackey being my author of choice. It seems like a weird scale of reading. The only thing that even comes close to an Easy Reader is now a series, but at the time was a standalone book Into the Land of the Unicorns that was written with the intent of being a series but the next book wasn’t published until I was over 21 so I waited a lot of years for that book. The books were published 10 years apart and I cried when I read the dedication "Dedicated to all the readers who have waited, patiently and impatiently for this second volume with my deepest apologies for taking so long." -Bruce Coville
I feel like this isn’t really following the assignment but I have to say how much a really enjoyed Tale of of Despereaux. My age seems to have nothing to do with what I like to read and I think that holds true to this day because I would absolutely read another easy reader having read Tale of Despereaux the only other easy reader (which was also a series) that I read was Series of Unfortunate Events because of the hype and reviews of the books. I think I got to book 8 before I lost interest in the repetitive pattern of them but I do remember enjoying them, I was also very much above the age range for the book.
Looking back at easy readers illustrations usually didn’t play a part in my reading. Until I read Into the Land of the Unicorns I was kind of under the impression reading sucked in general and after I changed my mind the words kind of stole the show. Who needed pictures when you could make the characters look how you wanted them to look? Actually I tended to avoid books with large images or many illustrations because I felt that it took away from making up the characters how I wanted them to look in my imagination. That being said when I was 16 I fell in love with graphic novels and even went back to younger series books provided they had chapter illustrations. I would rarely read anything without illustrations whereas in my youth illustrations usually annoyed me because I would think “Well that’s not what I think the characters look like.”
Well feel like I haven’t been very good at answering the questions assignment but to sum it up. My first easy reader was Into the Land of the Unicorns. I actually disliked having illustrations in my books after I read Into the Land of the Unicorns because they interfered with my personal creation of the book characters and settings. I have never been one to fit the age range of the books I read I feel that holds true to this very day, but reading shouldn’t have rules right? 
