Video games also interact and engage young boys’ attention better.
I was lucky - I was read to bed each night with Kipling’s poems, Wind in the Willows and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Video games didn’t exist, though I tried to “invent” analog versions of them. I got my “interaction” with bicycles, toy guns, and then with BB guns.
These old classics are just that....classics....and they belong in a library...not taking up "learning" time in school.
I always thought biographies/autobiographies was the way to go. Diverse with a lot of messages. But I don't see these on school lists. Most lists that I have seen were garbage...and promoting a certain author. "Follow the money".