By Dr. Seuss
Five of the Beginner Books in one box — The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and friends — the bouncy rhymes children learn to read on by sounding the words right out loud.
The Cat in the Hat turns up on a rainy afternoon and wrecks the house. A stubborn someone refuses green eggs and ham for sixty pages and then loves them. Fish are counted, feet are hopped on, foxes get tangled in tongue-twisting socks. These five were built on a short list of simple words on purpose, so the rhyme almost pulls the next word out of a child's mouth.
The rhyme does the heavy lifting: once a child has the beat, the last word of every line is almost guessable, so a page that looks long reads easy and a child gets to feel fast and clever. The words repeat from one book to the next, so the fifth book in the box is easier than the first felt. This is the classic way a rhyme-loving child crosses from being read to into reading on their own.