https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/absolute-beginners-guide-to-qb...
Like most people, I also learned how to program in BASIC from a mustachioed machete-wielding British gentleman whilst on safari.
But of course, your solution to that was twice as good for your education than if you’d learned only BASIC so that’s good.
My experience was kind of similar except I was learning in the mid 90s and only had access to various flavors of BASIC, because all the computers my school had were from 1980-1987 or so. When I saw modern GUI computers though, I couldn’t understand how what I’d learned in the character-based world could be applied to the GUI paradigm, so I gave up on programming until the Web and PHP gave me a usable mental model to get back into it.
I think I did also get my hands on a free version of Liberty BASIC from another book at one point, because it was on an included CD-ROM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_BASIC
I also moved into the Web sphere, because of course there were HTML books and I was already looking at JavaScript. I ended up picking up PHP for awhile, then eventually got into Java (especially after Minecraft was on the scene) and that has served me well career-wise.
I definitely remember Creepy, Battle and Space.
It's actually very good. I remember reading it at age 11 or so, and coming away knowing much more low-level stuff about computers than even the 18yo in the final year of school who were literally studying the stuff.
Things like "each instruction is a number", and registers like the PC, overflow, etc.
I went through a period (and a forest of pages) trying to write an entire game in machine code alone (with a small basic shim to load it).
It's a very approachable book.
I then asked my dad for a book on C++. While I managed to make a few things, I distinctly remember getting lost at the concept of the "this" pointer. I really gained programming competency when I discovered python a few years after this. Teenage years I spent most of my time playing with HTML and trying to understand what the heck dynamic HTML was.
I'm trying replicate that path with my kid. We just got him a C64 ultimate (replica of the original highly recommend commodore.net) and these books are perfect for him to toy around with.