Your child can read now. Not perfectly, but really — they get through an early reader on their own and they're starting to look at the thicker books on the shelf like they might be for them too. This is the shelf of books that meet them right there. Every one of these is a real chapter book with a real story that runs the whole way through, and every one is still generous about it: big print, short chapters, a picture on nearly every spread. Any one of these does the whole job on its own. Pick by whatever tempts your child tonight.
These six all had to clear the same bar: a real story with a beginning, a middle and an end, told in a book that never makes your child feel like they're being tested. So the chapters are short, the type is big, there are drawings all the way through, and every single one is funny. Ivy and Bean is the one I'd hand over first, but only because it's the most reliably delightful. Beyond that, go by taste. Ivy and Bean and Clementine are for the child who loves other children and their terrible ideas. Stink is for the smallest one in the class. The Notebook of Doom is for the one who wants monsters. Humphrey is for the animal lover. The Chocolate Touch is for the one who wants the story to be about something delicious going wrong. One of those is your child. Start there.