By Roald Dahl
Sophie gets snatched out of bed by a giant in the dead of night. Lucky for her, it's the Big Friendly Giant, the one who won't eat children — and the two of them set out to stop the nine giants who do.
Sophie can't sleep, and in the dead of night she spots an enormous figure moving down the street, blowing something through a bedroom window. Then a huge hand reaches in and carries her off to Giant Country. Her kidnapper turns out to be the Big Friendly Giant, who lives on foul snozzcumbers and spends his nights collecting good dreams to puff into sleeping children's rooms. The trouble is, he's the smallest giant around. The other nine — Fleshlumpeater, Bloodbottler, and the rest — are three times his size, and they gallop off every night to eat people, children included. So Sophie and the BFG hatch a plan, and it ends up going all the way to the Queen of England.
Dahl makes up hundreds of words here and just trusts your child to feel out what they mean from the sound of them, which is a real stretch and a lot easier with a grown-up laughing along. There's genuine menace under the nonsense — man-eating giants — and real tenderness in a lonely girl befriending a gentle giant, so it asks a little more of a reader than a cozy chapter book does. The playful narrator keeps a hand on your child the whole way, even when the giants are at their nastiest.