Here’s the irony: you can’t force a ten-year-old to love reading. You can only tempt them. So leave a stack of these books on the couch. Don’t say a word. Eventually, they’ll pick one up, complain it’s boring for five minutes, and then go silent for an hour. That silence? Pure gold.
And if they still want screens after that? Fine. But now you’ve armed them with stories that stick—like Leo, who still asks me if ghosts would make good babysitters. (Spoiler: According to Gaiman, they’re terrible at it.)
