By Jon Scieszka
Ten of the funniest writers for children each hand your child one short, self-contained story, so there's no whole book to get through, just one good laugh at a time.
Jon Scieszka rounded up ten writers who know how to make a nine-year-old snort, and asked each of them for one funny story. So your child gets Jeff Kinney, Kate DiCamillo, Jack Gantos, Mac Barnett, Christopher Paul Curtis, Eoin Colfer, Adam Rex and a few more, all under one cover, and every single story is short and stands completely on its own. There's a boy squaring off against a giant, furious turkey. There are best friends, terrible substitute teachers, and a lot of things going hilariously wrong. Nothing connects one story to the next, so your child can read one at bedtime and stop, or flip to whichever title looks funniest and start there. It was built for the child who says books are boring, and it mostly wins that argument in about four pages.
The whole point of this book is that there is no whole book. Ten separate stories means ten separate finish lines, and for a child who shuts down at the sight of two hundred pages, a story they can start and finish before lights-out is a small miracle. The names on the cover are the names your child already trusts to be funny, Jeff Kinney and Jack Gantos and the rest, so the first page is an easy yes. And every laugh is teaching them that reading and having fun are the same activity, which is the entire thing you've been trying to prove.