I'd hunt down an out-of-print series by Time-Life called A Child's First Library of Learning. It's 14 hardcover books that approaches science by asking questions. Simply skimming the table of contents -- all questions -- you get excited to read anything you can't answer. My daughter got fired up to read with this approach.
Here's an Amazon page for one of the books in the series.
If you look for newer options, you're likely to buy a single book that is an eye-popping schizophrenic mish-mash of content, quickly jumping from subject-to-subject, a lot too reliant on photos at the expense of conveying meaningful information.