You know the child who won't touch a chapter book but will read the funnies over your shoulder? This is the shelf for them. Newspaper comic strips, gathered into fat paperbacks — a joke every three or four panels, no story to keep up with, nothing to lose your place in. Any single one is a full, happy afternoon. Pick by whichever kind of funny sounds like your child, and don't be surprised when they read the same book five times.
Every book here is the same shape — daily newspaper strips, three or four panels, a joke apiece — and they all reward the thing reluctant readers actually do, which is open to any page and read one. Reach for whichever kind of funny fits the child. Garfield is the broadest, laziest, most instant laugh. Big Nate is all middle-school swagger. Peanuts is the gentle, wistful classic. Calvin and Hobbes has the biggest imagination and the richest words, so it rewards a stronger reader too. FoxTrot runs on video games and sibling warfare. Hand over the one that sounds most like your child and let them wear it out.