Read the Book, Watch the Movie
Read a book together, then watch the adaptation, then talk about what changed. Congratulations — your kid is now a film critic and a literary analyst, and they think they're just having family movie night.
"The book was better" is the gateway drug to literary opinion-forming. When a kid says "they left out the part where..." or "that character didn't look like I imagined," they're doing the deep comprehension work that reading teachers dream about. They're comparing texts, evaluating creative choices, and articulating preferences about narrative. They just don't know it.
Books for This
Books with well-known movie adaptations. Start with the ones your kid already loves as movies — reading the source material after seeing the adaptation works just as well. The comparison is the activity, not the order.

