As a budding a student of electronics, I found the mims book to be while not very rigorous to provide a good general overview and intuition on the field, which makes subsequent more "serious" more manageable, could you give more details as to why I should not read it?
I read "Getting Started" over and over from age 7 or so. Nothing else made any sense at that age. It took me a while to digest it but I did figure out enough to do more with the "160 in one electronics board" [1] than the circuits suggested in its book.
Despite all the things I left out I am grateful that I had it. If it went on and on about engineering calculations, I would not have had the capacity or patience. I would recommend other books if asked by an adult, but is something better out now for kids?
TAE, Practical Electronics for Inventors, Mims, and Charles Platt's series for Make tend to be the ones that come up most frequently, but I'd be curious to hear if you've found others that are excellent.
TAE of course. I also like Peter Wilson, _The Circuit Designer's Companion_, the 3rd edition is published 2012 by Newnes. It's on libgen if you want to look through it before buying.