I guess he's not very popular in the states, and thus my Soviet upbringing is showing, but I can't imagine growing up without him. I learned pretty much all of the geography that I know from him.
Verne suffers from a lack of good translations in English. Most of them are abridgments of public domain Victorian translations. They get the science wrong, they introduce British 19th-century racism, they rename characters for no reason (Axel -> Harry, Lidenbock -> Hardwigg), and they eliminate Captain Nemo's anti-British rant because after all, he's a wog.
That being said, no child's education is complete without "Around the World in 80 Days" and "Journey to the Interior of the Earth."
There's a F.P. Walter translation of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" which is both modern and donated to Project Gutenberg.
The North American Jules Verne Society has a list of works, a determination of which are the best translations, and links to Amazon here: http://www.najvs.org/works/index.shtml
Yeah, Jules Verne was awesome. His stuff is fairly popular here in the US as well, although I can't compare to how popular he was elsewhere. I read several of his books when I was younger. The Mysterious Island was always my favorite.
I can speak for how popular he was during the Soviet Union. As a pre-teen male, you were less than human unless you've read the Nemo/Grant/Island trilogy.
I guess he's not very popular in the states, and thus my Soviet upbringing is showing, but I can't imagine growing up without him. I learned pretty much all of the geography that I know from him.