Rival not in the sense of screen-time but brain time - the time his brain spends processing and imagining those characters which provide very little value.
Or, even though they often watched the typical junk stuff too, they started (slowly, and sometimes retroactively) applying literary thinking to that as well, and it helped them develop their taste and thinking skills.
Can't compete with these, nope. Only way is to limit them a few hours a day or less. The ability to relax and be bored is essential to support the desire to read.
We did it an hour before bed every night under warm lighting. Loved Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, Grinch, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Engelbreit's Mother Goose, Nursery Rhymes set.
Loved The Police Cloud by Chris Neimann, and Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton.
We liked The Giving Tree, but be prepared as it shows a dysfunctional relationship. We took it as a "teachable moment."
Agree with those who say to go to the library for variety.
I'll ad 'The Little Prince' as one my kids liked.
But separate from reading books spend time telling stories about a character you make up with your child. Get them to love story telling and being creative. For my family it was 'A pig named Nelson' who did things like wear his halloween costume to school and accidentally get mistaken as a super hero when things went down, or who loved spaghetti and ate and ate until he threw up so much it flooded the whole house. The best was when my kids were adamant things go the nice happy way where Nelson didn't get into trouble, but nope, my story had him start to go the other way and my kids could see what was coming and would bury their heads under the pillows. You can also slip upcoming things into the stories so that the kids can prepare for them (low key non-preachy parenting in advance).
- The Cremation Of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service
- The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
- Forgiven and King John's Christmas by A. A. Milne
- Called Up by Dudley Clarke (not sure how good that one is to everyone, I'm just incredibly nostalgic for it.)
It gave me a lifelong love of rhyming and word games, one I've always been happy to have. Yours might still be a bit young for that, but other more age-appropriate stuff would work just as well. Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light In The Attic by Shell Silverstein are fantastic.
Oh man, wait, also Robert Munsch. Equally wonderful memories with some of those (Love You Forever is in my opinion, really great from the lens of a kid, and it's silly to read it through the eyes of an adult. The intended message is very obviously that your parental love will always be with your child. It also introduced me to the idea of caring for my parents someday as something I would have to consider, and something I would want to do).
As for screen time itself, I would really recommend just putting a hard limit on it, it did nothing but good for me as a kid to be limited to 4 hours of recreational screen time per week, and when I was introduced to computers, the limitations they place on me vis-a-vis social networks saved me from myself in so many ways.
Find stuff you'll enjoy reading to them. And read to them a lot. You've got the right idea.
MO Williams books are great for that age. The elephant and piggie books are fun, Annette's Baguette is brilliant. The Brambly Hedge books are lovely. Dr Seuss is mostly quite fun. Peter's railway (if they like trains or engineering at all), the Thomas the Tank engine books, the topsy and Tim books are ok...
But get lots of books from the library, charity / thrift stores. Get lots of books to try out, and have available for them to read. And if they aren't interested, you can always thrift them again. Hanging out at the local library can be good. No time pressure, just let them browse and look at whatever random things they want.
For slightly older kids, we've really enjoyed reading Hillary McKay, Terry Pratchett's kids books / short stories, Vivian French's books are great. and some of the classics are great too - EE Milne, the Paddington books...
The part they liked the most was my being next to them reading the books, each day. I would just ask them to choose a book, and off we went.
Funny thing is one day my son started to read the book himself without opening the book. I was shocked he had pretty much memorized the first half. Turns out that is normal and a good thing.
As they got older, before getting a device, they would always bring a book into the car when we drove anywhere.
The pull of TV and YT stuff is that its kinda mindless entertainment.
Julia Donaldson books are great, such as The Gruffalo. Great art style and easy rhymes.
We’ve also had a lot of success with the various 5-minute collection books, such as 5-minute Winnie the Pooh stories. They love going from story to story.
Brian Jaques' Redwall series.
Try reading to them every night and let them pick it up.
They’ve got a musical rhythm to them the kids get into. They’ve basically been able to memorize the books by singing them.
The author has put out other books as well, and my kids love them just as much.
Looking at what I just wrote I should probably get him more cat books.
Fantastic read. Read it to my daughter multiple times and she read a few times herself.