Childhood and youth book series in reading order

Carolyn Meyer, born June 8, 1935, is an American author of novels for children and young adults, working chiefly in historical fiction. Meyer wrote the Young Royals series and contributed to The Royal Diaries series from Scholastic. The catalogue lists 56 books starting with Miss Patch's Learn-to-Sew Book (1969), and early entries include Amish People: Plain Living In A Complex World (1976). Other series are Hotline and Dog Vacations, and subjects include history, kings and queens, princesses, diaries and African Americans.

Gary Paulsen

181 books• 17 series

Survival and outdoor adventure run through Gary Paulsen's writing for young readers. The catalogue holds 181 books, from Some Birds Don't Fly (1968) to Northwind (2022), at a median length of 105 pages. Brian Robeson, Francis Tucket, Duncan Culpepper, Murphy and the World of Adventure books head the series lines, with non-fiction and picture books alongside. No new Paulsen title has appeared since 2022.

Jimmy Carter

51 books• 1 series

Jimmy Carter (1924-2024) served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and wrote 51 books. Carter's subjects cover his own childhood and career, American politics and government, peace negotiation, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Christian faith. The catalogue opens with Why Not the Best?: The First Fifty Years (1975), two years before he took office, and takes in Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1982) and The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East (1986). Later titles turn to the Bible and devotional writing, the most recent dated 2020. Books median 224 pages, and the 2000s were Carter's most productive decade.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is one of the series by Kathryn Lasky, an American children's writer born June 24, 1944, who writes for adults as Kathryn Lasky Knight and E. L. Swann. Lasky's children's work also includes Dear America and The Royal Diaries books, Wolves of the Beyond, Sugaring Time and The Night Journey, and honours include a Newbery Honor, the National Jewish Book Award and the Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers' Literature. The catalogue holds 159 books from I Have Four Names for My Grandfather (1976) to Sacred Light (2026), including Tugboats Never Sleep (1977), The Weaver's Gift (1980) and Beyond the Divide (1983). Horses Of The Dawn, Bears Of The Ice and Camp Princess are further series, and subjects name owls, wolves, diaries and Jews.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

54 books• 1 series

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American novelist, short story writer and essayist who wrote in Yiddish and then translated his own work into English. Singer received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 and stood among the leading figures of the Yiddish literary movement. This catalogue holds 54 titles dated 1950 to 2024, opening with The Family Moskat (1950) and taking in Satan in Goray (1955), Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1957), The Magician of Lublin (1959) and The Slave (1962). The newest entry is A Letter to Mama and Other Uncollected Stories (2024).

Alice Taylor writes about Irish country life. To School Through the Fields (1988) and Quench The Lamp (1990) recall a rural childhood, and the Mossgrove novels, The Woman of the House (1997) among them, turn the same setting into fiction. Christmas books, poetry and country miscellanies fill out 30 titles published between 1988 and 2023, the last of them Ellie and The Fairy Door. Irish social life and customs are the constant subject.

Helen Forrester was the pen name of June Huband Bhatia (6 June 1919 to 24 November 2011), an Anglo-Canadian author. Bhatia wrote about growing up in Liverpool, England, through the Great Depression and World War II, and also produced fiction. The catalogue lists 15 Forrester books from Twopence to Cross the Mersey (1974) to A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin (2003). Titles include Liverpool Daisy (1979), By the Waters of Liverpool (1981), Three Women of Liverpool (1984), The Latchkey Kid (1985) and The Moneylenders of Shahpur (1987).

Beverly Cleary

49 books• 12 series

Beverly Cleary (born Beverly Atlee Bunn; April 12, 1916 to March 25, 2021) was an American author of children's and young adult fiction. Henry Huggins (1950) was the first book, and Ramona Quimby, Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins with the dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse became the recurring characters. Cleary's books have sold 91 million copies worldwide. The catalogue records 49 books through 2013, grouped into series such as Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse and Ellen & Otis, with humour, family life, school and pets among the subjects.

Roald Dahl

89 books• 2 series

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British writer of children's books and short stories, and also a poet, screenwriter and wartime fighter ace. Born in Wales to Norwegian immigrant parents, Dahl lived mostly in England and served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, first as a fighter pilot and then as an intelligence officer. The catalogue lists 89 titles from The Gremlins (1943) to Marvelously Revolting Recipes (2024), among them Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946), Kiss Kiss (1959), James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Dahl's books have sold more than 300 million copies.

Dave Pelzer

11 books• 2 series

Dave Pelzer writes memoir and self-help out of a childhood of abuse and foster care. A Child Called: One Child's Courage to Survive (1995) opens the catalogue, followed by The Lost Boy (1997) and A Man Named Dave (1999); Help Yourself (2000), The Privilege of Youth (2004) and Moving Forward (2008) turn to advice. Eleven titles are catalogued, the last being Return to the River, and the catalogue is dormant.

Rick Bragg

13 books

Rick Bragg's 13 catalogued books run from All Over But the Shoutin' (1997) to The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People, Lost and Found (2021). Bragg writes nonfiction about the American South: memoir, biography, reported essays and the social history of working-class white families. Ava's Man (2001), The Prince of Frogtown (2008), The Most They Ever Had (2009) and Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story (2014) fall inside that run. Bragg took a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his journalism at The New York Times, and his books return often to his own family in Alabama. Nothing new has been catalogued since 2021.

Dan Gutman

198 books• 23 series

Dan Gutman is an American writer of mainly children's fiction, born in 1955. The best-known lines are the My Weird School books, The Genius Files and the Baseball Card Adventures, which began with Honus & Me. The catalogue holds 198 books from It Ain't Cheating If You Don't Get Caught (1990) to Mrs. Towne Is a Clown! (2026), including early baseball titles such as Baseball Babylon (1992). Subjects include schools, teachers, baseball, time travel and humorous stories.

M.M. Kaye was a British writer, born in 1908 and died in 2004, and The Far Pavilions (1978) is her most famous book. The Death In... mysteries account for much of the catalogue, each named for a place: Kashmir (1953), Berlin (1955), Cyprus (1956), Kenya (1958), Zanzibar (1959) and the Andamans (1960). The Share of Summer volumes sit alongside them, with biography, childhood and women authors among their subject headings. India and British social life recur across the run. Fourteen books are catalogued, spanning 1953 to 2025.

Homer Hickam

20 books• 2 series

Homer Hickam is an American author, a Vietnam War veteran and a former NASA engineer who trained the first Japanese astronauts. His memoir Rocket Boys (1998), also published as October Sky, reached the New York Times bestseller list and became the 1999 film October Sky; The Coalwood Way (2000) and Sky of Stone (2001) continue that autobiographical line. The Second World War, coal miners and aerospace engineers run through the subject headings, and Josh Thurlow is the one catalogued series. Twenty titles are catalogued, published between 1989 and 2021, from Torpedo Junction (1989) to Don't Blow Yourself Up (2021). Hickam was born in 1943.

Cynthia Rylant, born Cynthia Smith on June 6, 1954, is an American author and librarian who has written more than 100 children's books across picture books, short stories, novels, nonfiction and poetry. Missing May took the 1993 Newbery Medal, A Fine White Dust was a 1987 Newbery Honor book, and two further titles are Caldecott Honor Books. The catalogue records 229 books from When I Was Young in the Mountains (1982) onward, with series including Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter & Tabby, Poppleton and the Lighthouse Family.

Jacqueline Wilson

178 books• 15 series

Jacqueline Wilson, born Jacqueline Aitken on 17 December 1945, is an English novelist who writes for children. Adoption, abuse and divorce are among the realistic topics the novels take on. Wilson made a debut in 1969 and has passed 100 books; this catalogue lists 178, the earliest dated entry being Hide And Seek (1972) and the latest The Seaside Sleepover (2025). Tracy Beaker, Hetty Feather, Girls, Sleepovers and Stevie Day are among the series. Friendship, sisters, family life and schools appear in the subject records.

Mary Karr

10 books• 2 series

Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist and memoirist from East Texas, and the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University. The Liars' Club (1995) is her best known book, a bestselling memoir, followed by Cherry (2000) and Lit (2009). Poetry runs alongside the prose: Abacus (1987), The Devil's Tour (1993), Viper Rum (1998), Sinners Welcome (2006) and Tropic of Squalor (2018). The Art of Memoir (2015) completes ten catalogued titles.

Amos Oz

34 books• 1 series

Amos Oz, born Amos Klausner on 4 May 1939 and dead on 28 December 2018, was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual, and a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onward Oz argued publicly for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forty books carry the name, across novels, short story collections, children's books and essays, and the work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer. This listing holds 34 of them, from Where the Jackals Howl (1965) to What Makes an Apple? (2022), with Fania Oz-Salzberger sharing the credit on one title.

Wole Soyinka

30 books• 1 series

Wole Soyinka - Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, born 13 July 1934 - is a Nigerian writer, playwright and poet. His output runs to three novels, ten short story collections, seven poetry collections, twenty-five plays and five memoirs, plus two translated works and many articles for newspapers and periodicals. The 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Soyinka for a wide cultural perspective and poetic overtones in fashioning the drama of existence. Born into an Anglican Yoruba family in Ake, Abeokuta, he took a preparatory education at Government College, Ibadan, and went on to University College Ibadan. The catalogue lists 30 titles from A Dance of the Forests (1963) to Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021).

Joy Castro is an American novelist, memoirist and essayist, and the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where Castro directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies. The Nola Cespedes Mysteries are recorded against the name. The listing opens with The Truth Book (2005) and reaches One Brilliant Flame (2023), taking in Hell or High Water, Island of Bones, Nearer Home, How Winter Began and Flight Risk. Subjects cover women journalists, abused children, New Orleans and self-realization in women.