Your child says it flat out: they hate chapter books. What they usually mean is that the last one was a wall of tiny words with no pictures, and it beat them. This trail starts somewhere that barely looks like a chapter book at all, then asks a little more each step, until a real one feels like no big deal. Start at the top and climb one rung at a time.
What climbs across these books is how much text sits on the page and how much it reads like a true chapter book. Start here, and each one asks a little more than the last. Step one is almost all speech bubbles and drawings; the last is real fantasy prose with only a spot picture here and there. Nobody skips rungs — each kind of book should feel easy before you hand over the next one. Pictures and jokes stay on every rung, so the ask never feels like a punishment.