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Top 14 Dog Man Books in Order (2026)

Dog Man books run to fourteen volumes now, so the question worth answering is not whether a nine-year-old will read them but which one to hand over first. The numbers on the spines settle it, because each book assumes you met the characters in the one before. What that leaves is working out how far along a kid already is, and what happens once the fourteenth runs out.

All fourteen numbered volumes, sequenced the way they were written. Two of them tell one story across a pair of books and are better bought together than apart. The rest depends on whether you are starting a kid off or filling a gap on a shelf that is already half full.

1.Dog Man: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #1): From the Creator of Captain Underpants: Volume 1 - by Dav Pilkey

Dog Man: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #1): From the Creator of Captain Underpants: Volume 1
The opening four books install every character the later ones lean on, which makes this the stretch that decides whether a kid keeps going. A police officer and his police dog are hurt in the same blast, and the surgery that saves them attaches one to the other. Dav Pilkey frames all 240 pages as a comic drawn by George and Harold, the two troublemakers from Captain Underpants, which is why the spelling is deliberately awful. Begin here and nothing later needs explaining.
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5.Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #5): From the Creator of Captain Underpants: Volume 5 - by Dav Pilkey

Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #5): From the Creator of Captain Underpants: Volume 5
Books five through eight bring in the villains and relatives that turn a gag series into something with an actual ensemble. A gang of small-time villains shows up here and then refuses to leave, resurfacing across several later books. Golding supplies the pun on the cover, one of a long line of literary titles a kid will not get for another decade. Lord of the Fleas earns its slot as the volume that gives Dog Man someone to fight more than once.
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9.Dog Man: Grime and Punishment: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #9): From the Creator of Captain Underpants: Volume 9 - by Dav Pilkey

Dog Man: Grime and Punishment: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #9): From the Creator of Captain Underpants: Volume 9
The Dog Man graphic novels get noticeably denser from here, in page count and in how much earlier plot they take for granted. Dostoevsky gets the treatment on this cover, and 240 pages is where these stop being twenty-minute reads. The cast by now runs to Petey, Li'l Petey, Grampa and the Supa Buddies, so the plotting is busier than anything in the first four. A kid who started at the beginning follows Grime and Punishment easily; one handed it cold will not know half the faces.
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Find the Gap, Then Buy the Next One

Work out which number a kid stopped at, buy the next one, and the sequence takes care of itself from there. If you are stocking a shelf rather than closing a gap, the wider Dav Pilkey comics selection is the faster place to look.

Frequently Asked Questions

What order should you read the Dog Man books in?
Publication order and story order are the same thing here, so the number on the spine is all you need. Start at Dog Man Volume 1 and work up to Big Jim Believes, which is the fourteenth. Nothing in the series asks a reader to jump around or skip ahead.
What age are Dog Man books written for?
They sit in the nine-to-twelve band, though the reading level runs younger than that and plenty of six- and seven-year-olds get through them with an adult nearby. The comics format does most of the work, since a stalled reader can follow the pictures while the words catch up. A Tale of Two Kitties is a fair place to check whether a younger kid is ready.
How long does one Dog Man book take to get through?
Most run between 220 and 260 pages, but these are comics, so a page goes by in seconds. A confident reader finishes Lord of the Fleas in an afternoon, while a slower one spreads Grime and Punishment across a week of bedtimes. Either way, none of them is a multi-week commitment.
Are Dog Man books a good pick for a kid who avoids reading?
Yes, and for concrete reasons: the panels carry the plot, the deliberate misspellings remove the fear of getting words wrong, and the flip-corner animation pages break the reading up with something to do. A kid who stalls on prose usually gets through Dog Man Unleashed without noticing the length. The Scarlet Shedder works for the same kid a few volumes later, because the trouble Dog Man is in is easy to read off his face.
What should a kid read after finishing all fourteen?
Cat Kid Comic Club is the direct continuation, with Li'l Petey running a comics class for baby frogs instead of a superhero plot. It swaps one long story for a stack of short ones in different styles, which is a genuine change of pace after fourteen books built the same way. Kids who start copying the drawings tend to get more out of it than the ones who just want the next adventure.

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