Books That Ask Your Child to Do Something

Your child says reading is boring, and sitting down with a novel is a fight you've stopped picking. So stop handing them books to read and hand them books to use. One gets torn up and drawn on to escape a tomb. One won't move until your child draws themselves into it. One is a thousand quiz questions with a score to beat. One is a records book about video games, the thing they already think about all day. Pick by which one matches your child and hand it over.

Four books, four separate ways of beating 'reading is boring'. Escape This Book! is the loudest about it. Your child is sealed in an Egyptian tomb and has to tear pages out, fold them over and draw on them to get free, so the book is a thing to be used up and using it up IS finishing it. Doodle Adventures goes further still: Carl the duck asks your child to draw themselves onto the page, and the story will not continue until they do. There's nothing there to read passively, because there's nothing there until your child makes it. Quiz Whiz works the opposite way round, a thousand trivia questions with a score at the end, so reading happens in ten-second bites while your child is busy trying to beat you. And the Guinness Gamer's Edition doesn't argue with the screen at all. It's a browse book about the exact thing your child already cares about, so there's no persuading to do. A child who won't sit down with a novel will give forty minutes to a book they get to do something to. That's the whole thread. Pick by your child.