Reading The Hobbit out loud to my little brother
On The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
My brother is nine and doesn't sit still for anything, so I wasn't expecting much. We did one chapter a night. By Riddles in the Dark he was doing the Gollum voice better than I was.
It really is written to be read aloud. The narrator keeps talking to you directly, stopping to explain things, and that works much better spoken than it does on the page. We're on to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe now. He has opinions about Edmund.