Captain Underpants Reading Order: All 12 Books in Order

Twelve books about two fourth graders who hypnotize their principal into becoming a superhero in his underwear. The order matters less here than in almost any series we cover — but it matters more than people expect, because books six and seven are one story split in half, and the last four are a single time-travel arc that does not make sense scrambled.

Here is the whole run, plus the spin-offs, and which editions to buy.

The short answer

Start with The Adventures of Captain Underpants and read by number. If a reader lands in the middle it is not a disaster, but books six and seven have to be read as a pair and in that order.

Do you have to read them in order?

Mostly yes, which surprises people. The first five are close to standalone: a new villain, a new set of Flip-O-Ramas, everything reset by the last page. From book six Pilkey starts running longer arcs. The Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy is split across books six and seven with a genuine cliffhanger between them, and books nine through twelve deal with the consequences of a time-travel plot that begins in nine.

The running jokes also compound. The comics George and Harold draw inside the books get funnier the more of them you have read, and a few of the later gags depend on remembering a detail from book two.

Every Captain Underpants book in order

A note on the color editions

Almost everything currently in print is the Color Edition, which is the original text with full-color art replacing the black and white. The story is identical. If you are matching a set on a shelf it is worth buying consistently one way or the other, but there is no reading-order consequence either way.

The spin-offs

Two Super Diaper Baby books and a manga retelling exist, drawn as though George and Harold made them:

They sit outside the numbering entirely and can be read at any point. The Super Diaper Baby books are shorter and sillier than the main series — good for a younger sibling, and good for a reader who has run out of Captain Underpants and is not ready for Dog Man.

What to read next

Dog Man, almost always. Same author, same humor, drawn by the same in-universe fourth graders, and a longer run still going. Readers usually make that jump on their own the moment they finish book twelve.

Keep browsing

Every book above has a page in our catalog. The obvious next series has its own guide: the Dog Man reading order. For more in the same register, see the funniest books for tweens and The Bad Guys reading order, or books for reluctant readers if this is a conversion project.