Imagination book series in reading order

by Steven Kellogg

by Tedd Arnold

by Eve Bunting

by Leslie Patricelli

Jennifer L. Holm

66 books• 13 series

Jennifer L. Holm, born in 1968, writes for children in both prose and comics, and holds three Newbery Honors and an Eisner Award. Babymouse, an imaginative mouse at school, recurs across the Babymouse and BIG Adventures of Babymouse books, with Squish, Sunny, My First Comics and Evil Princess vs. the Brave Knight as the other graphic series. May Amelia, Boston Jane, Turtle in Paradise and The Fourteenth Goldfish sit alongside them in prose. Holm's 66 catalogued books run from Our Only May Amelia (1999) to Sunny Figures It Out (2025), at a median of 126 pages.

Holly Anna writes illustrated children's fiction for grades 1 to 3, with 12 books catalogued from 2017 to 2020. The first title is Daisy Dreamer and the Totally True Imaginary Friend (2017), and the latest is Sweet Dreams! (2020). Subjects include imaginary friends, pixies, magic, friendship and winter. Other titles are The Ice Castle (2017), The Not-So-Pretty Pixies (2017), Posey, the Class Pest (2018) and The Wishing-Well Spell (2018).

Leslie Patricelli is an American writer and illustrator of board books for babies and toddlers, and of fiction for older children. The board books pair opposites and daily routines - Yummy Yucky (2003), Quiet Loud (2003), Big Little (2003), Baby Happy Baby Sad (2008), No No Yes Yes (2008) - with Potty and Toot! among her internationally recognised titles. Patricelli also wrote the Rizzlerunk Club series, including Best Buds Under Frogs and The Big Bad Lies, and illustrated the Mini Myth books. The catalogue holds 37 titles at a median of 26 pages.

Nicola Bayley is a British children's author and illustrator, born in Singapore on August 18, 1949. Bayley is known for pictures of cats, including illustrations for The Tyger Voyage by Richard Adams and The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber. The catalogue lists 13 books from Nicola Bayley's Book of Nursery Rhymes (1975) to The Curious Cat (2002), and includes the Copycats series. Titles from 1984 include Crab Cat, Elephant Cat, Parrot Cat and Spider Cat.

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.

Steven Kellogg is an American author and illustrator of children's books, born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1941. The catalogue lists 94 titles, including the Pinkerton books, the Jimmy's Boa series and A Tall Tale, at a median 32 pages each. Animals, friendship, folklore, dogs and fairy tales supply the recurring subjects. The University of Findlay in Ohio gave Kellogg an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2011, and his original illustrations went to the Mazza Museum there.

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.

Mo Willems

89 books• 9 series

Mo Willems makes picture books and early readers, funny and animal-led: the Pigeon books, Elephant & Piggie, Knuffle Bunny, Cat the Cat, Unlimited Squirrels and Leonardo. Friendship and emotions are the recurring subjects, and the books are short, a median of 57 pages. Ninety catalogued titles run from 1994 through Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (2003) and Knuffle Bunny (2004) to The Pigeon WON'T Pick a Color!, with another title scheduled for 2027.

Eric Carle

165 books• 6 series

Eric Carle (25 June 1929 to 23 May 2021) was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a picture book first published in 1969, has sold more than 55 million copies in over 70 languages. Carle illustrated more than 70 children's books and wrote most of them, and sales across the Carle books exceed 170 million copies. Catalogued titles begin with 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo (1968), followed by The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969), Pancakes, Pancakes! (1970), The Tiny Seed (1970) and Do You Want to Be My Friend? (1971). Subjects include board books, counting, color, animals and caterpillars.

Julia Donaldson

349 books• 14 series

Dame Julia Donaldson, born Julia Catherine Shields on 16 September 1948, is a British writer and playwright who served as Children's Laureate from 2011 to 2013. Rhyming stories for children made Donaldson's name, above all those illustrated by Axel Scheffler, such as The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, Stick Man and Superworm. Donaldson first wrote songs for children's television; the lyrics of A Squash and a Squeeze became a picture book in 1993, and books have been the focus since. The catalogue carries 349 entries, from Tim's Bad Mood and Other Stories (1970) to The Tooth Fairy and the Crocodile (2026), including Tales from Acorn Wood, Princess Mirror-Belle and Zog.

Andy Griffiths

68 books• 9 series

Andy Griffiths is an Australian children's author, born in 1961, and the Australian Children's Laureate for 2026-2027. Griffiths is well known for working with Terry Denton, and the Treehouse series has been adapted for the stage. The Just! series became the animated show What's with Andy?, and The Day My Bum Went Psycho! (2001) was also adapted for television. The catalogue opens with Just Tricking! (1999) and lists 68 books to 2026, with humorous stories, schools and practical jokes among the subjects.

Kes Gray is a British children's author, born in 1960. The catalogue lists 98 Gray books from The Get Well Soon Book (2000) to One Night Before Christmas (2025), and the median title runs to 32 pages. Subject tags include picture books, stories in rhyme, animals, frogs and a fictional character named Daisy. Eat Your Peas and Who's Poorly Too? also date from 2000. Series include Daisy Fiction, Nelly the Monster Sitter, Oi Frog and Friends, Get Well Friends and Jack Beechwhistle.

Pinkalicious anchors Victoria Kann's picture books and early readers, a character whose name mutates across the series: Pinkalicious (2009), Goldilicious (2009), Silverlicious (2011), Pinkalicious and the Pink Pumpkin (2011), Rubylicious (2021). Pink, colours, imagination, food habits and sibling humour supply the subjects across 38 titles, most of them 24 pages. Nothing new has appeared under the Kann name since 2021.

Peter H. Reynolds

25 books• 1 series

Peter H. Reynolds is a Canadian author and illustrator of children's picture books and the founder of FableVision, an educational media company. Imagination, creativity and self-confidence recur across his 25 catalogued books, which span 1993 to 2026 at a median of 44 pages. The Dot (2003), Ish (2004) and So Few of Me (2006) are among the titles, and Creatrilogy is the series listed for Reynolds. Our Treasures Within (2026) is the newest.

Jessica Young writes children's books about friendship, school, pets and imagination. My Blue Is Happy (2013) is the first of 21 books. Art-Rageous, Nature Calls, New and Improved and Original Recipe all appeared in 2015. Finley Flowers, Haggis and Tank Unleashed and Fairylight Friends are the three series. Baby's Here! (2022) is the most recent title.

Ashley Spires is a Canadian author and illustrator of children's books, and the catalogue files the work under graphic novels. Spires created the Binky the Space Cat graphic novels, which run through Binky the Space Cat (2009), Binky to the Rescue (2010), Binky Under Pressure (2011) and Binky Takes Charge (2012). Other catalogued titles include License to Scratch (2013), The Most Magnificent Thing (2014), The Most Magnificent Idea (2022), The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z (2023) and The Most Magnificent Team (2025). Catalogue subjects record cats, comics, imagination, families and outer space.

Dave Eggers

60 books• 10 series

Dave Eggers, born March 12, 1970, is an American writer, editor and publisher of fiction, non-fiction and children's books. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a 2000 memoir, became a bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for General Nonfiction. Eggers founded Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the 826 Valencia literacy project, Voice of Witness and ScholarMatch. The catalogue lists 61 books, including What Is the What (2006) and Contrapposto (2026), with The Minister of Color and Light due in 2027.

Chris Van Dusen is an American author and illustrator of picture books, born in 1960, and writes in rhyme. Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee (2000) opens a catalogue of 12 titles that reaches If I Built a Town (2025). Mr. Magee carries one series, the If I Built... books another: a car (2005), a house (2012), a school (2019), a town (2025). The Circus Ship (2009), King Hugo's Huge Ego (2011) and Hattie & Hudson (2017) sit outside the series. Van Dusen has also illustrated the Mercy Watson books by Kate DiCamillo.

Charles M. Schulz was an American cartoonist, born in Minneapolis in 1922 and working until his death in 2000. Schulz created the comic strip Peanuts, whose cast includes Charlie Brown and Snoopy, after developing an earlier strip called Li'l Folks from 1947. United Features Syndicate renamed the redeveloped strip Peanuts and began publishing it in October 1950. The book catalogue holds 781 titles, from More Peanuts in 1954 to Snoopy, the Story of My Life in 2025, gathered into collections such as The Complete Peanuts and Peanuts Every Sunday.

Jan and Stan Berenstain wrote picture books about the Berenstain Bears. The run begins with The Big Honey Hunt (1962) and reaches 400 titles by The Berenstain Bears: Father's Day Blessings (2018). Family life, school, brothers and sisters, scouting, Christmas and Christian life supply the recurring subjects, and many of the books are told in rhyme. A median length of 32 pages places them with early readers. Publication peaked in the 1990s and the catalogue is likely complete.

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.

Alyssa Satin Capucilli

142 books• 11 series

Alyssa Satin Capucilli, born November 2, 1957, is an American children's author whose most notable work is the Biscuit series. Biscuit, the opening book, appeared in 1996, and the series had sold more than 21 million copies worldwide by 2016. Biscuit books belong to HarperCollins' I Can Read! line. The catalogue lists 142 books from Peekaboo Bunny (1994) to Biscuit's Puppy Sleepover (2025), and other series include Katy Duck, Tulip and Rex, This Bear and Library Fish.

Jane O'Connor is the writer of Fancy Nancy, a children's picture book series begun in 2005 and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. The first Fancy Nancy book stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for nearly 100 weeks, and the series grew past 100 titles and 50 million copies sold, with translations into 20 languages including Hungarian and Hebrew. Nancy moved into chapter books in April 2012 with Nancy Clancy: Super Sleuth. The catalogue lists 134 O'Connor books from Yours Till Niagara Falls, Abby (1979) to Besties for Eternity (2025), across series such as Lulu the Witch, Sir Small and Miranda Bookman.

Giles Andreae is a British writer and illustrator, born 16 March 1966. Andreae created the stickman poet Purple Ronnie and the artist-philosopher Edward Monkton, and wrote Giraffes Can't Dance. The children's series under his name take in Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, Billy Bonkers, Sir Scallywag, Nat Fantastic and the Pants books, most of them picture books in rhyme at a median of 32 pages. The listing holds 86 titles dated 2000 to 2021.