Complete Big Nate
A collection of the Big Nate newspaper comic strip, which is where the character started years before the illustrated novels. Nate Wright is a sixth grader with unshakeable confidence and a detention record to match, and the strips run on the gap between his self-assessment and the evidence. Read as strips rather than as a story, so it can be opened anywhere, which suits younger readers who bounce off longer books. Same character and school cast as the novels, in a different form.