Books that last bind not only the child to the family, the family to itself, and one family to another, but the generations of families together. The attention span of the modern child has been terribly narrowed by something such as Sesame Street and its imitators. But the attention span of modern adults is even more terribly narrowed. Nietzsche, a great spirit but not always a good one, said that modernity is the replacement of daily prayers with daily newspapers. The third reason is that the older ways included much more story telling by storytellers.
Books are great.
From that I went on to Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and more. Still, even if the family reads the Bible together, if stories are told by storytellers, if the old books, such as Pilgrim's Progress, and the durable books, such as Little Men, are often read together or alone, it is right to read some recent things. Allowing for differences, that is true of the history of mankind, including ourselves and all around us at the present time and in recent times. There are so many. I do not think it is as hard to choose rightly as it at first seems.