What to hand them next.
My daughter has read every Captain Underpants book twice, can quote the Flip-O-Rama instructions from memory, and keeps asking if there are more even though I've explained the series is finished. She wants that exact frequency: comics mixed with chapters, jokes about butts, a plot that moves like a downhill skateboard. If your house is also in the grip of Tra-La-Laa fever, here are eight graphic novels that hit the same notes. Big illustrations, bigger laughs, heroes who solve problems by being ridiculous. None of them are subtle. All of them work.
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Dav Pilkey's follow-up to Captain Underpants is a cop who's half dog, half man, all heart. Petey the cat is the villain, Flip-O-Rama is back, and the jokes land exactly where a second-grader expects them to. It's the most obvious pick on this list and also the most bulletproof.
Pick this one if they want more Dav Pilkey immediately.
Nate Wright is a sixth-grade disaster who thinks he's destined for greatness. Lincoln Peirce writes him with the same self-serious swagger George and Harold have, and the comic strip panels keep the pacing fast. My daughter calls him 'the kid who's bad at everything but doesn't care.'
Pick this one if they love a hero who's confident for no reason.
Two alligator detectives who work for a secret agency and solve crimes in the city sewers. John Patrick Green keeps the art bright and the chapters short, with enough silly spy gadgets to fill a Flip-O-Rama. Reads like Captain Underpants went undercover.
Pick this one if they want animal heroes and detective plots.
Greg Heffley is the anti-George and Harold: he wants to be popular, not pranking the principal. But Jeff Kinney's stick-figure illustrations and diary format hit the same rhythm as Captain Underpants, just with more recess drama and less toilet humor. The boxed set buys you four books of peace.
Pick this one if they're ready for school humor without the superheroes.
Max is a middle schooler who imagines himself as a superhero while hiding from bullies in his locker. Rachel Renée Russell draws him in the same heavy-outline style as Dork Diaries, with comic panels and daydream sequences that mirror George and Harold's Treehouse Comix aesthetic.
Pick this one if they like the comic-within-a-comic thing Captain Underpants does.
A grumpy blue cat and his relentlessly cheerful friend Blurmp star in short comic strips that feel like Sunday newspaper funnies. Jim Benton keeps every joke to one page, which means kids who burn through Captain Underpants in an afternoon can finish this in twenty minutes and ask for another.
Pick this one if they want something funny they can read in one sitting.
A six-year-old philosopher and his stuffed tiger have adventures that exist only in Calvin's head. Bill Watterson wrote these strips forty years ago, but the imagination-versus-reality engine is the same one that powers Captain Underpants. Plus, my daughter now uses 'scientific progress goes boink' as a catchphrase.
Pick this one if they love heroes with huge imaginations.
Also on: Books for the Kid Who Can't Get Enough of Big Nate, Books for the Kid Who Can't Get Enough of The Bad Guys
HiLo is a robot boy who crash-lands on Earth and has to save the world with his two new friends. Judd Winick draws it like a Saturday morning cartoon, with sound effects in giant letters and action scenes that take up whole pages. The humor is gentler than Captain Underpants but the pacing is identical.
Pick this one if they want robots and aliens instead of toilets.
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Open the book finder →Millennial dad in the PNW. Reading aloud with my daughter (8) and son (4). Honest takes on the books we actually read at bedtime.
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