Children's poetry, American book series in reading order

by Eve Bunting

by Walt Whitman

Nikki Grimes, born October 20, 1950, is an American poet, journalist and author of books for children and young adults. The catalogue lists 75 books from Growin' (1977) to Twice Blessed (2026), and Meet Danitra Brown (1984) and Malcolm X (1992) are among them. Grimes's series are Dyamonde Daniel, Danitra Brown and Garvey. Catalogue subjects include children's poetry, African Americans, friendship, love, school and biography.

Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 - November 13, 1952) was an American writer of children's books, among them The Runaway Bunny (1942) and Goodnight Moon (1947), both with illustrations by Clement Hurd. Brown has been called the laureate of the nursery. Brown also published as Golden MacDonald for Doubleday, as Timothy Hay for Harper & Brothers, and, with Edith Thacher Hurd, as Juniper Sage for William R. Scott. The catalogue lists 166 books, opening with When the Wind Blew (1937), then I Like Bugs and The Steam Roller (1938). Stories in rhyme, rabbits, bedtime and sound recur in the subjects.

Shel Silverstein

25 books• 3 series

Shel Silverstein wrote children's poetry, nonsense verse and pictorial humour, and worked as a cartoonist, songwriter and musician. Silverstein lived from 1930 to 1999 and was raised in Chicago. His 25 catalogued books span 1955 to 2017, from Take Ten to Runny Babbit Returns, and run short at a median of 95 pages, with the 1960s his densest decade. Silverstein's drawings appeared in newspapers and magazines including Playboy during the 1950s, and Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book (1961) was his satire for adults. The Giving Tree (1964), Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic are among his most acclaimed titles, and the Missing Piece books form one of his two series.

Jonathan London has 141 catalogued books dating from 1992 to 2022, the Froggy series among them. Froggy Gets Dressed (1992) is the earliest title, alongside The Lion Who Had Asthma and Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back from the same year. Other series include Duck and Hippo, Aaron's Wilderness, Shawn and Keeper and Brown Bear. Subjects include picture books, stories in rhyme, children's poetry, animals, wolves and imagination. Here Comes Truck Driver Hippo (2022) is the most recent title.

Walter Dean Myers (born Walter Milton Myers; August 12, 1937 - July 1, 2014) was an American writer known above all for young adult literature. Myers was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, grew up in Harlem, and turned to writing after a hard childhood, with encouragement from teachers. Myers wrote more than 100 books, picture books and nonfiction among them, and won the Coretta Scott King Award five times. Fallen Angels (1988) ranks among the most frequently challenged books in the U.S. for adult language and realistic depiction of the Vietnam War. The catalogue lists 123 books starting with The Dancers (1972), including Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff (1975) and The Young Landlords (1979).

Alice Schertle is an American poet, teacher and children's author from Los Angeles, born in 1941. Little Blue Truck is the series most associated with her name, and Little Blue Truck Lost and Found arrived in 2026. The catalogue lists 59 titles from The Gorilla In The Hall (1977) onward, including the Cathy And Company books of 1980. Stories in rhyme, trucks, cats, seasons and children's poetry fill the subjects, at a median 32 pages.

The Night Before books are rhyming picture stories for early readers, catalogued under Natasha Wing and various others. The line began with The Night Before Easter and The Night Before Halloween in 1999 and has reached 41 titles, the newest being The Night Before the Big Game (2026). Holidays and school milestones supply most of the subjects: Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, kindergarten, first grade, summer vacation, a new baby and the tooth fairy. Each book runs about 32 pages.

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.

Carl Sandburg

48 books• 2 series

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist and editor who won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. In Sandburg's lifetime, collected verse such as Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918) and Smoke and Steel (1920) established the poet as a major literary figure. The catalogue holds 48 books from In Reckless Ecstasy and Incidentals (1904) to Poetry for Kids (2017), including Rootabaga Stories (1922) and Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926). Subjects include American poetry and children's poetry.

Margarita Engle

40 books• 1 series

Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet who writes most of her books in verse, for children, young adults and adults alike. Cuban history and the natural world supply her subjects, from The Poet Slave of Cuba (2006) through The Surrender Tree (2008) and Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (2009). The Surrender Tree made Engle the first Latino writer to receive a Newbery Honor, in 2009. Engle served as the sixth Young People's Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019 and won the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. Her catalogue runs to 40 books, beginning with Singing to Cuba (1993) and reaching Evamar (2026).

Maya Angelou

51 books• 3 series

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014), born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American memoirist, poet, essayist and civil rights activist. Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry. The first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), covers Angelou's life up to age 17. Other catalogued titles include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). The catalogue counts 51 books, including And Still I Rise (1978), and ends with Strategies of Abundance (2014). Angelou received more than 50 honorary degrees.

Jane Yolen

237 books• 22 series

Jane Yolen (Jane Hyatt Yolen, February 11, 1939 to June 11, 2026) was an American author of fantasy, science fiction and children's books. The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella, is the best-known Yolen work, and Owl Moon and The Emperor and the Kite are among the others. The short works Sister Emily's Lightship and Lost Girls both won Nebula Awards. The catalogue counts 237 books from The Witch Who Wasn't (1964) to Daddy Plays a Mean Guitar (2026). Series include Commander Toad, How Do Dinosaurs...?, Pit Dragons, the Young Merlin Trilogy, Books of the Great Alta and Tartan Magic. Yolen worked as an editor, collaborated most often with Adam Stemple, and in 2012 became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture.

Patricia MacLachlan (March 3, 1938 to March 31, 2022), born Patricia Marie Pritzkau, was an American children's writer. MacLachlan's novel Sarah, Plain and Tall won the Newbery Medal in 1986 and gave its name to a series. The catalogue holds 63 books for young readers, including the Barkus series, Arthur, for the Very First Time and My Poet (2022). Family life, dogs, grandparents, friendship and frontier life are frequent subjects.

Bear Snores On (2002) is the first of 60 catalogued books by Karma Wilson, a children's author whose subjects include stories in rhyme, board books, bears, mice, cats and forest animals. Bear Wants More (2003), Bear Hugs (2004) and Bear Stays Up for Christmas (2004) are among the titles, and Bear Feels Sad (2025) is the newest. Series credited to Wilson are Bear, Calico, Little Pip, Sweet Briar and Mortimer Mouse.

Walt Whitman

60 books• 3 series

Walt Whitman (Walter Whitman Jr., May 31, 1819 to March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist who also wrote two novels. Whitman drew on both transcendentalism and realism and is often called the father of free verse. Leaves of Grass (1855) drew charges of obscenity from some readers for its open sensuality. Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and left school at 11 to work. The catalogue lists 60 books, including Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate (1842), Drum Taps (1865) and Oh Captain! My Captain! (1865).

Natalie Zane Babbitt, born Moore, lived from July 28, 1932 to October 31, 2016 and wrote and illustrated children's books. Tuck Everlasting (1975) was adapted into two feature films and a Broadway musical, and Babbitt took a Newbery Honor and a Christopher Award and stood as the United States nominee for the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1982. The catalogue opens at Dick Foote and the Shark (1967) and takes in The Search for Delicious (1969), Knee-Knock Rise (1970), Goody Hall (1971) and The Devil's Storybook (1974). Subjects name children's fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, poetry and short stories.

Dr. Seuss

95 books• 4 series

Dr. Seuss is the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904–1991), an American children's author, illustrator, animator and cartoonist who adopted it as a Dartmouth College undergraduate. Geisel wrote and illustrated more than 60 books as Dr. Seuss, and sales passed 600 million copies by 1991. The catalogue lists 95 Dr. Seuss titles, beginning with And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937) and including Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) and Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949); releases continue after Geisel's death, through 2026. Stories in rhyme, nonsense verse and picture books dominate the subjects, and Cat in the Hat and Horton the Elephant are among the series.

Sandra Boynton

103 books• 1 series

Children's board books in rhyme are the core of Sandra Boynton's work. The American humorist, songwriter and illustrator has 103 catalogued books published between 1979 and 2026, from Hester in the Wild (1979) to Iguana Miss You! (2026). The list takes in But Not the Hippopotamus (1982), Moo, Baa, La La La! (1982) and The Going to Bed Book (1982). Animals, bedtime and humour recur throughout, and Little Pookie is her named series. Boynton is actively publishing.

Jason Reynolds

23 books• 3 series

Jason Reynolds, born on 6 December 1983 in Washington, D.C., and raised in Oxon Hill, Maryland, writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle grade readers. Rap was an early inspiration, and several poetry collections came before the first Reynolds novel, When I Was the Greatest (2014), winner of the John Steptoe Award for New Talent. The New York Times bestselling Track series comprises Ghost (2016), Patina (2017), Sunny (2018) and Lu (2018). The catalogue lists 23 Reynolds books, from My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. (2009) to Coach (2025), including All American Boys (2015) and Long Way Down (2017).

Alice Walker

50 books• 1 series

Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, short story writer and social activist. Walker's 50 catalogued books run from The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) to Sweet People Are Everywhere (2021). The Color Purple (1982) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Walker the first African-American woman to take that award, and it heads a Color Purple sequence. Poetry such as Revolutionary Petunias (1973) and essays such as In Search of Our Mother's Garden (1983) sit beside the novels. African American women authors, biography and poetry recur as subject headings. No new title has appeared since 2021.

John Updike

83 books• 8 series

John Updike, born March 18, 1932, was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet and critic of art and literature who died on January 27, 2009. Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, one of only four writers to do so, and the output spans over twenty novels and more than twelve short-story collections, plus poetry, children's books and criticism of art and literature. The New Yorker printed hundreds of Updike stories, reviews and poems from 1954 on, and Updike wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. The catalogue lists 83 books from The Poorhouse Fair (1958) to Hoping for a Hoopoe (2020), including Rabbit, Run (1960) and The Centaur (1963). Series include Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Henry Bech, Maples Stories and Eastwick.

Lois Duncan (April 28, 1934 to June 15, 2016), born Lois Duncan Steinmetz, was an American novelist, poet and journalist. Duncan is best known for young adult novels, and historians credit Duncan as a pioneer of young adult fiction, above all in horror, thriller and suspense. The daughter of professional photographers Lois and Joseph Janney Steinmetz, Duncan started writing young and published two early novels as Lois Kerry. Hotel for Dogs (1971), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1973) and Summer of Fear (1976) are among the novels. The catalogue lists 51 titles from Debutante Hill (1957) to Written in the Stars (2014), including A Gift of Magic (1960) and Game of Danger (1962).

Robert Frost

32 books• 4 series

Robert Frost (1874–1963) was an American poet known for realistic pictures of rural New England life and for a command of American colloquial speech, both used to open out social and philosophical questions. Frost is the only poet to have received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1958, took the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 and was named poet laureate of Vermont in 1961. Thirty books are catalogued, from A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) through Mountain Interval and The Road Not Taken (1916) to New Hampshire (1923) and the collected editions.

Eve Bunting, born Eve Bolton, was a Northern Irish-born American writer of more than 250 books who lived from December 19, 1928, to October 1, 2023. Bunting wrote fiction and non-fiction, mainly novels for children and young adults, and also wrote the text of picture books. Many of the books are set in Northern Ireland, where Bunting grew up, while others range in subject from Thanksgiving to riots in Los Angeles. The Two Giants (1971) was Bunting's first book. Series in the catalogue include Frog and Friends, Horse Stories, Dinosaur Machines and Pirate Captain's Daughter, and subjects include animals, horses, stories in rhyme and mystery stories.