By Jeff Kinney
The first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid books in one box: Greg Heffley's cartoon-filled journal of middle-school survival, and the front end of one of the longest-running funny series around.
Greg Heffley is sure he's going to be famous someday, and middle school is just the annoying thing standing in the way. Getting between him and greatness are his goofy best friend Rowley, his older brother Rodrick, and parents who don't get him. He writes the whole mess down in a journal (a journal, not a diary, he'll remind you), half in his own handwriting and half in cartoons. Most of the comedy comes from how certain Greg is that none of the disasters are his fault. This box has the first three books, and the series keeps going well past a dozen, so it's the front end of a collection a hooked child will want to keep filling in.
If your child loves comics but calls books boring, this is a good bridge. The pages are about half cartoons with lots of white space, so it moves fast and never looks like a wall of text. Greg's cheerful cluelessness sits right in the humor a nine- or ten-year-old finds hilarious. And three books is a real start: because the series runs so long, once your child is hooked you've got a next-birthday answer for years.