Books for Reluctant Readers: 15 That Actually Work

Your kid can read.

Your kid will not read.

Those are two completely different sentences, and if you're here, you already know which one you're living with.

I've spent more than thirty years performing for children, mostly in school gyms and cafeterias and libraries. You learn something fast doing that job: a room full of six-year-olds will not politely pretend. They don't fake interest to be kind. If you've lost them, you know within about four seconds.

Books work the same way.

So this isn't a list of books that are good for your child.

It's a list of books that win the first four seconds.

First, One Distinction That Changes Everything

Two kinds of kids get lumped together under one label, and they need opposite things.

A struggling reader wants to and can't yet. The words are genuinely hard. This child needs decodable text, patience, and probably a conversation with their teacher.

A reluctant reader can and won't. Nothing is broken. They have simply decided, based on evidence, that books are boring.

That second kid is not a problem to be fixed. That kid is a customer who hasn't been sold yet.

And I'd gently point out something: they might be right about the books they've been handed. If every book somebody gives you is quietly trying to improve you, and the one thing you want is to laugh, you'd get suspicious of books too.

This list is for that kid.

Readit has a question.

"What if a kid just doesn't like reading?"

Then they haven't hit the right book yet.

"What if they still don't?"

Then they're a person with taste and we keep trying.

"Books Are Boring"

This is the most common objection and the easiest to beat, because the cure is simply a funnier book. Not a worthier one. A funnier one.

Walter the Farting Dog is the one I'd reach for first, and there's evidence behind that. Buried in its reviews is a parent who says it plainly: "If you're a parent of a child who doesn't like to read (like I am), it's all about finding material that will keep their interest."

Walter is also the lowest-rated book we've reviewed, because it's rated mostly by adults, plenty of whom did not enjoy reading it out loud while reporting in the same breath that their kids came apart laughing.

Your kid is not the one leaving those reviews.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales works on the older end, roughly six and up, and it works for a specific reason: it treats the book itself as a thing that can be broken. The table of contents falls on the characters. The narrator argues with you. For a kid who thinks books are stuffy, watching one come apart is deeply satisfying.

And if you want the whole gross-out shelf, I ranked fifteen fart books here, including which ones have an actual story under the joke.

"I Don't Want to Be Read At"

Some kids don't dislike books. They dislike being an audience.

The fix is a book that hands them the controls.

The Monster at the End of This Book is fifty-plus years old and still nobody has beaten it. Grover begs you not to turn the page. Turning the page is the only thing you can do. The child holds all the power and the book knows it.

It's the first book I name when anyone asks what kind of funny I'm chasing in my own work.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! does something I think is quietly brilliant. Small children spend all day being told no. No climbing that. No running in here. Then Mo Willems hands them a book and says: your turn. Now you tell somebody no.

A kid who won't read a word will absolutely shout at a pigeon.

The Finn the Frog books run the same engine across a whole shelf. Finn lives inside the book, and the reader keeps wrecking it. You're not the audience. You're the problem.

"I Can't Sit Still"

For the kid who is physically incapable of sitting through a plot, stop trying to make them sit through a plot.

Give them a job.

Wacky Wednesday is the purest version. Reading the words is only half the job. The other half is finding what's wrong on every page, and there's a count to hit. A kid who won't sit still for a story will hunt a page for ten minutes and argue with you about whether the shoe counts.

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole is 275 words. That's the entire book. Everything that actually happens is in the pictures, where two boys keep missing enormous diamonds by inches and you can see every one of them. Kids don't read this quietly. They yell.

How to Catch a Leprechaun ends by daring your child to design a better trap than the ones in the book. Ten minutes later there's cardboard on the floor and nobody can find the scissors. The reading was the on-ramp.

"That Book Is Too Long"

Sometimes the objection is just volume of text on the page, and that's fair.

Green Eggs and Ham is built out of fifty different words. Forty-nine of them are one syllable. The fiftieth is "anywhere." Dr. Seuss wrote it on a bet after his editor Bennett Cerf wagered him fifty dollars that he couldn't write a book a child would actually want to read on that tiny a vocabulary.

Cerf lost. It's one of the best-selling children's books ever made.

For a kid who freezes at a dense page, that's the whole argument: this book cannot possibly be too hard, and it's still funny.

No, David! is close to wordless. A child who "can't read" can read this one out loud on the first try, and the confidence that produces is worth more than the book.

The Elephant & Piggie books are the best early readers going. Enormous white space, two characters, speech bubbles, and jokes that actually land. A new reader can finish one in a sitting and feel like they finished a book, because they did.

That feeling is the product. Here's the full series in order.

"I Want Something Scary"

Never underestimate a kid who wants a safe thrill. Mild dread is a fantastic motivator, and a child who wants to be scared will turn pages fast.

Creepy Carrots! and Creepy Pair of Underwear! are the same trick done two ways. Grayscale art, one color popping off the page, and something following a rabbit around. In the second one that something is a pair of glowing green underpants with a face, which is exactly as funny as it sounds.

Kirkus called the underwear one perfect for anybody wanting a scary tale "that won't leave them with more fears than they started with."

What Actually Works, From Somebody Who Does This Live

Five things I'd tell any parent trying to turn this around.

Let them pick the book. Even if it's the same one for the ninth night. Even if it's the fart one. Choice is most of the battle, and a kid who chose the book has already agreed to it.

Read it badly, on purpose. Do the voices. Overdo the voices. If you're embarrassed, children can smell it instantly. The single biggest difference between a read-aloud that lands and one that dies is whether the adult committed.

Stop before they want you to. Ending one page early, with them asking for more, is worth more than finishing the book to a kid who checked out two pages ago.

Let them be right about a bad book. If they say it's boring, believe them and close it. You are building an association, and forcing a dull book teaches exactly the lesson you're trying to undo.

Count everything. Comics count. Joke books count. The same book eleven times counts. Reading the back of a cereal box counts. A child who reads for pleasure at all is a child who reads.

If Your Child Is Actually Struggling, That's a Different Thing

I want to be careful here, because a funny-book list can do real harm if it's read as a diagnosis.

Everything above is aimed at the kid who can read and has decided not to bother. That's a motivation problem and a better book often fixes it.

But if your child consistently struggles with decoding, or reads a page and can't tell you what happened, or is working noticeably below where you'd expect, that is not a book-selection problem and no amount of farting dogs will solve it.

Talk to their teacher. Ask about a reading specialist if it keeps up.

Please don't let anybody, including me, turn a genuine reading difficulty into "you just haven't found the right funny book."

Maybe they haven't. Maybe they also need help. Both can be true at once.

And while they're getting that help, they still deserve books that make them laugh. Arguably more than anybody.

One More Thing About Reading Level

Reading level and interest level are not the same measurement, and confusing them causes a lot of unnecessary misery.

A child can be perfectly capable of decoding a book and have zero interest in it. A child can also be desperate to read something that's currently a bit beyond them alone.

That second one isn't a problem. Read it together. Take turns. Let them take the parts they want and you cover the rest. Do the voices. Stop and argue about whether the wolf is lying.

The win was never "we finished a book at the officially correct difficulty."

The win is four words.

What else have you got?

If you want the wider shelf, I've ranked the funniest picture books here, scored and sorted.

The Honest Part

No book on this list is a switch.

You are not going to hand a kid Walter the Farting Dog and watch them ask for the complete works of Beverly Cleary the next morning. That's not how it goes.

What you're doing is smaller and more durable. You're changing one belief.

Books are boring becomes most books are boring, but not that one.

That crack is all you need. Everything else comes later, and it comes on their schedule rather than yours.

And if it takes a farting dog to open it, I'd take the farting dog. I write funny books for a living precisely because I think laughing is the shortest road into a kid actually wanting to read.

Readit, anything to add?

"Yes. If a kid reads the same book forty times, is that forty books?"

No.

"Is it one book forty times?"

Yes.

"Either way they read forty times."

You know what, that's the whole article.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit