By Akira Toriyama
The book that turned a whole generation into manga readers. It's also the one on this list I'd read through myself before handing it over.
Goku is a small boy with a monkey tail and startling strength, and he lives by himself in the mountains. A teenage girl named Bulma turns up hunting the seven Dragon Balls — gather all seven and you get one wish — and it turns out Goku has been keeping one as a keepsake from his grandfather. They set off together and collect a shape-shifting pig, a hopeless desert bandit, and an old martial-arts master along the way.
It's the book that pulls children into manga, and it does it on pure momentum: a fight or a gag every few pages, comic timing that still holds up forty years later, and a long shelf of volumes waiting once they're hooked. One practical thing before you start. Manga reads right to left, so you open what feels like the back cover and the panels run the other way. It takes about a page to get used to, and then you stop noticing. If yours has worked through the gentler books here and wants something with more punch, this is the natural next step.