It helps improve their critical thinking skills. When they try to solve the riddles, they have to think logically and look at things from different perspectives.
One great book is 'Jumanji' by Chris Van Allsburg. It has a really exciting story full of adventures and riddles that the characters need to solve. Another is 'The Hobbit' by J.R.R. Tolkien. Although it's also loved by adults, it has many elements that kids enjoy, like Bilbo Baggins solving riddles in the dark cave with Gollum.
One riddle story could be this. There was a woman who had a very strange job. She worked in a place where everything was backwards. She had to write left - handed and read from right to left. One day, she found a key that didn't seem to fit any lock in the normal world. But in her backwards world, it was the key to a very important box. What was her job? She was an archaeologist who dealt with ancient languages and artifacts where things were written and designed in a different way. So, the key was for a box with ancient writings or relics.
It's unlikely that there were many story books specifically for kids in 1777. Education and entertainment for children were quite different then, and resources for creating and distributing such books were scarce.
A riddle for you. In a story, there was a gardener who had a large garden full of different types of flowers. One day, he noticed that all the red flowers were on one side of the garden and all the white flowers were on the other side. But there was one flower that was both red and white. How could this be? Well, it was a flower that was in the middle of changing colors due to a genetic mutation or some environmental factor.
Well, here's a long riddle story. There was an old wizard who lived in a dark forest. He had a magical box. On the box was written a riddle: 'I'm always in front of you but can't be seen. What am I?' People from all around tried to answer. Some guessed it was the future, but that wasn't right. The real answer was 'Your future'. Because it's always in front of you in a sense, but not something that can be physically seen.
Riddle: You're in a dark maze. There are two paths. One path has a sign that says 'This way to certain doom.' The other has no sign. Obviously, the path with no sign is the way to escape because the other one clearly warns of doom.
One riddle could be: 'I'm in a room with four doors. Behind one is freedom, behind the others are monsters. The doors are red, blue, green, and black. A sign says the safe door's color is the color of the night sky without stars.' The answer is black, as the night sky without stars is black, leading to escape.
One classic scary riddle is: 'I have no feet to dance, I have no eyes to see, I have no life to live or die, but yet I do all three. What am I?' The answer is a fire. A fire can seem to 'dance', it doesn't have eyes but can 'look' menacing, and it's not alive but can start and end, causing destruction like a living thing might.
The answer to the riddle of reading at night is "Teacher".
Riddles:
Why did Zhuge Liang outsmart Sima Yi and not finish reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms? - Zhihu
What kind of seemingly absurd but actually interesting cold knowledge is there? - Zhihu
3 What is "a few words"? The three words referred to the Records of the Historian, and the two words referred to the Han Dynasty and its author, Liu Xiang.
Why is the word "sea" above the word "letter" in the phrase "a bosom friend in the sea is like a neighbor in the far end of the world"? - Zhihu
Why is the word "bed" in "the moonlight before the bed is suspected to be the frost on the ground" placed after the word "suspected"? - Zhihu