By Bill Doyle
Your child is sealed in an Egyptian tomb with three ways out, and the only way to reach any of them is to tear, fold, and draw on the book itself.
Your child picks who they are first: the pharaoh, a worker hauling stone for the pyramid, or an archaeologist who opened the wrong door. Then the tomb seals shut and they have to get out. The way out runs through the book itself. A page tells them to rip it, so they rip it. A page tells them to fold the corner over to see what's behind the wall, so they fold it. A page sits half-empty, waiting for them to draw the thing that saves them. Pick wrong on the worker's path and they get mummified, the kind of ending a lot of eight-year-olds will read out loud to the whole room. And because there are three paths, getting out once doesn't mean they're done.
Some children who won't read have decided, somewhere along the way, that books are something done TO them. This one can't be read that way. It doesn't move until your child does something physical, and that something is usually the kind of thing they've been scolded for their whole life. Tearing the page IS the progress. That turns the job from sitting still into wrecking something on purpose. I'd hand it to the child who won't give you ten minutes with a novel; an hour can go by before they notice they've been reading the whole time.