Captain Underpants Books

Start with The Adventures of Captain Underpants and follow Scholastic's numbered order through The Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot. The jokes and adventures are easy to enter, but recurring villains, time-travel problems, and character doubles make publication order the clearest path.

The First Epic Manga tells the story of book #1 again with new manga artwork by Motojiro. A child can choose that version instead of the original opening book; it is not book #13.

The Epic Tales books are comic readers based on the animated television series. Super Diaper Baby follows a superhero created by George and Harold. Both are optional offshoots rather than required stops in the numbered story.

Sources: Scholastic's official Captain Underpants list, Scholastic's First Epic Manga announcement.

Expect abundant toilet humor, underwear jokes, name-calling, rule-breaking, pranks, and conflict with an angry school principal. Villains, robots, monsters, explosions, and comic transformations create frequent peril, but the action is exaggerated and silly rather than realistic or gory.

The books combine short chapters, cartoons, comic inserts, and animated-looking Flip-O-Rama pages. That variety can make a long-looking book feel manageable for children who enjoy visual humor or are still building confidence with chapter books.