Your child doesn't read. Not reluctantly, not slowly — they don't do it, and the sight of a chapter book makes them leave the room. This is a shelf of six books where none of that matters, because there's nothing here to start, finish, or keep up with. A joke. A fact. A record. Three sentences about earwax. That's the whole unit, and it's over before your child has time to remember they hate this. I've laid them out roughly by how little each one asks, easiest at the top.
There's one question behind the order of this page, and it isn't which of these is the best fact book. It's this: which one can a child who hates reading pick up, open at random, read nine words, and put down having succeeded? That's the only test I've used. Rank on anything else and you get a different page. Rob Elliott's joke book wins it, and it isn't close, because a joke is the shortest complete piece of reading that exists — setup, punchline, finished, and then your child gets to perform it at their brother, which no fact book pays back. Weird But True! 1 comes next because the object is doing the work: it's tiny, soft, costs less than lunch, and opening it isn't a decision anyone has to make. Uncle John's does something none of the others do — it files each piece by how long it takes to read, short, medium or long, so your child can look at a page and choose one they already know they'll finish. That sounds like a small thing and it's enormous for this child. Then the two annuals, which ask more, because they're big heavy objects and the pull is the photograph before it's the words. That's fine. The words come after. And 5,000 Awesome Facts is last, because twenty-five facts about sloths in a row is a real ask of a child who has never read twenty-five of anything on purpose. It's the best book here for a child who's already hooked. It's the wrong one for the first week.