my friend's kid is pretty good at reading - he's 4 - and has recently gotten obsessed with super heroes - we found some that had 'friendly-looking' super heroes but most are the 'real' looking ones. she's not wild about violence and is trying to shield him somewhat - I just got him a Tag(leapfrog) Spiderman booka nd 2 batman books(level 1 or 2 readers)

he likes dr. seuss, when dinosaurs came with everything, super heroes, berenstain bears(esp the dinosaur or 'scary' looking ones), scooby doo(I haven't gotten any of these since the print was too small on the ones I saw) he gets intimidated by too many words and still likes pictures that are interesting. sometimes we can get him to stick with one if we 'share' - read every other page and take turns. she wants books with some words so he keeps expanding his skills but still with pictures.

I sat at B&N the other day for literally an hour and a half looking through TONS of leveled readers I think they're called - and picked out 6 after culling many more than that. I finally got danny and the dinosaur, fire house cat (these sounded good to m!), batman, batman and robin, a lightning/mator book, and one about learning to swim(last one in is a rotten egg)si nce he'll be taking swim lessons and in this one the kid can't swim and someone pushes him in the deep in of the pool and he gets brave and asks the lifeguard to help him swim better.

are there any others along these lines anyone could recommend? I don't think he's ready for magic tree house though that may be soon esp if he has help reading them or someong reads themt o him - can't wait til he's ready for hank the cowdog and boxcar children but those don't have pictures like he likes. some of the levled readers I read were just dumb IMO - I didn't see anything good about the story though a kid may feel differently.

eta: also I sawa bunch of nonfiction books from DK - with 'real' photos - he doesn't have anything like this and not sure how kids feel about these? I'm sure some must like them since they have a bunch of titles but at what age?