If you want kids to read, you need to give them a reason to want to read. For myself, I was given a trunk of about 200 superhero comic books around age 5. Nobody had time to read them to me, so I had to learn how to read them myself. And I still remember the day I realized Peter Parker had books on his shelves I'd seen with my mother's books - so I tried to read Herman Hesse about age 8 because it was a book Peter Parker had on his shelf.