It really depends on the age of the child and how well they read. Here's a link to a good website showing different best-selling books for different ages of children.
NightJohn and My Brother Sam is Dead are good books.
In my opinion, some good fiction books to read are the Harry Potter Series, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians The Lightning Thief, and the 39 Clues Series.
The lightning thief Is a very good.
A few good cloth books for kids include Emily's Day, Peekaboo I Love You, and Good Night Teddy. Good cloth books have to be washable,chewable and interactive.
Henrys freedom box, the last safe house.. these are all slavery stories.
Junie b Jones
some do and some do not
The spy kids series for DVD and catch that kid DVD
Try The Da Vinci Code. It's a good read, but remember it was written as fiction. It has enough references to facts to make it seem real, which is probably the hallmark of good fiction.
I suggest having them read a few books before bed. Reading to your kids and having them do assignments on them is a good little home project, I suppose.
Clive Barker is a horror fiction writer. A few of the books he has written has went to the Big Screen. My favorite is Hellraiser. He has some good books if you like the genre.
Depends what kinds of books you like to begin with - whether it be fiction, nonfiction, romance, mystery, true crime, thriller ....etc.