By Cube Kid
A twelve-year-old villager keeps a diary about ditching farm work to train as a warrior, all of it set inside the world of Minecraft.
Runt is a young villager in a blocky world any Minecraft player will recognize on sight. Everyone assumes he'll grow up to farm, but Runt wants to fight, so he talks his way into the village combat school and starts training to battle the zombies, creepers, and skeletons that show up after dark. His diary runs on big dreams, embarrassing flops, a tough teacher or two, new friends, and the daily grind of leveling up, all narrated by a boy who's sure he's meant for greatness even as he trips over his own sword.
You know the child who'll grind on Minecraft for an hour but calls a book boring after two pages? This is the one I'd hand them. It drops that same world onto the page with the controller swapped for a diary, and reads like the game crossed with Wimpy Kid: short entries, goofy doodle-style pictures, a hero who keeps failing his way forward. Knowing the game does a lot of the lifting. A child who already knows what a creeper is and how XP works doesn't have to decode a strange new place first, so they get straight to the fun of reading about a world they already love.