Books Like Dog Man

Why it worksBook two is where the series settles into its actual engine: Petey the cat invents something, it backfires, Dog Man wrecks the furniture solving it. It also introduces Flip-O-Rama, two pages the child physically flips back and forth to animate a fight - the one bit of the book that gets done forty times and is the reason this survives re-reading better than book one.

Worth knowingAssumes you know who Petey and Chief are; it works alone but the first ten pages will confuse a child who skipped book one. Contains a sustained joke about Dog Man licking faces and one about a fish left in a desk drawer.

Why it worksThis is the one that adds Li'l Petey, a kitten clone, and it is the first Dog Man with a feeling underneath the slapstick - a father who does not want his son and a son who keeps turning up anyway. Children who have read one and two and want the next thing get a book that is still 90 percent chase and explosion but leaves them with something.

Worth knowingPetey abandoning Li'l Petey lands harder than the cover suggests, and a few children find the scene where the kitten is left in a cardboard box genuinely sad. Reads badly out of order - this is the third book and the emotional beat only works if you already dislike Petey.

Why it worksA wolf, a snake, a shark and a piranha decide to become heroes and their first act is freeing 200 dogs from a pound. At 2,311 words it is less than half a Dog Man, mostly two-tone cartoon panels and shouted dialogue, and it is genuinely the easiest way into this whole lane - the shortest book that still looks and feels like a chapter book.

Worth knowingEnds on a cliffhanger and expects you to buy book two; there is no self-contained resolution. Mr Snake eats a guinea pig in one running joke, and the shark's disguises rely on cross-dressing gags that read dated to some parents.

Why it worksBook three, where the guinea pig from book one turns out to be the villain and the series stops being a set of gags and becomes a plot with a returning enemy. Useful as the point to decide whether your child is in for the long haul - it reads fastest of the three and it is the one that hooks.

Worth knowingThird in a series that genuinely requires order. Dr Rupert Marmalade is a mad-scientist villain with a machine that turns the heroes' bodies inside out, drawn in enough detail to bother a squeamish six-year-old.

Why it worksA slice of pizza and a taco argue about who is best, hold a vote, and lose to a third candidate. Under 800 words, huge lettering, one or two panels a page - this is the graphic novel to give a child who has just finished Elephant and Piggie and is not ready for anything denser.

Worth knowingGenuinely tiny; treat it as a picture book with panels rather than a chapter book. The joke is one joke, so it re-reads on charm rather than plot.

Why it worksThree short stories in speech bubbles between a relentlessly cheerful narwhal and a sceptical jellyfish, in blue and yellow only. At 848 words it is the gentlest possible first graphic novel - two speakers, two colours, nothing to track - and the joke is entirely kindness meeting cynicism, so there is nothing to shield a five-year-old from.

Worth knowingVery short. A child who has been reading Dog Man will finish this in ten minutes and want more, and the whole series is this length.

Why it worksNarwhal decides to be a superhero without having a superpower, and spends the book cheerfully failing to find one. Same two-colour, two-speaker format as book one, so a child who managed that one reads this one unaided - which is the whole reason to buy the second in this particular series rather than move on.

Worth knowingStands alone but the running jokes (waffles, the imaginary pod) are funnier if you have read book one.

Why it worksAlmost wordless - Owly and Wormy speak in pictograms inside speech bubbles rather than sentences, so a child who cannot yet decode reliably reads a whole graphic novel on their own and is correct about what happened. There is no faster way to make a five-year-old feel like a reader.

Worth knowingOwly's first friends are two hummingbirds who have to migrate away, and the goodbye is the emotional centre of the book - it makes some children cry. Because the vocabulary is symbols, it does not build decoding skill; use it for confidence, not phonics.

Why it worksTwo boys hypnotise their headteacher into believing he is a superhero who fights in his underwear. The chapters are two to four pages, half of them are comics the boys supposedly drew themselves, and Pilkey stops the prose dead for Flip-O-Rama - so a reluctant six-year-old is never more than a page from something that is not prose.

Worth knowingATOS 4.3, noticeably harder text than Dog Man despite looking easier, and it is the one to hand over second not first. The plot rewards George and Harold for pranking, lying and hypnotising an adult, and the toilet humour is relentless rather than occasional. Some schools will not stock it.

Why it worksAt 1,109 words this is the Pilkey a five-year-old can actually manage - full-colour spreads, one or two sentences a page, and a plot (small bullied mouse gets an enormous robot friend) that is basically wish fulfilment. It is the honest bridge title: a child who wants Dog Man because an older sibling has it can be handed this instead and not feel fobbed off.

Worth knowingSold alongside Dog Man and Captain Underpants but is a fraction of their length - a child expecting 200 pages will finish this in one sitting and feel short-changed unless you frame it as book one of nine.

Why it worksTwo alligator secret agents travel by sewer and solve a case about an exploding cupcake. The whole book is built on puns a seven-year-old can just about get ('very sewer-ious'), which means the humour rewards reading the words rather than skipping to the pictures - the opposite of most graphic novels at this level.

Worth knowingAt 8,472 words and ATOS 3.3 this is over half again the length of Dog Man and a real step up; hand it over after Dog Man and Bad Guys, not before. The pun density is exhausting for an adult reading it aloud, and the plot has three threads a six-year-old will lose track of.

Why it worksA boy in silver underpants falls out of the sky with no memory and enormous power, and the two children who find him have to hide him. Full-colour, wide panels, and the pacing is deliberately cinematic - it is the graphic novel to hand a child who has finished Dog Man and wants a real story rather than a run of gags.

Worth knowingThe robot antagonist and the fight scenes are properly action-driven and louder than anything else in this set; the first book ends mid-story. Hilo's amnesia and the question of what he actually is runs across several books, so this is a commitment.

Why it worksAn anxious squirrel and a reckless bird are chased across the country by a cat. It reads like a road movie - the panels move left to right almost cinematically - and the whole book is one continuous chase, which holds a six-year-old who cannot yet hold a plot with subplots.

Worth knowingThe cat is a genuine predator and the peril is sustained rather than comic; there is a scene at a waterfall that some children find frightening. Squirrel's anxiety is played for laughs in a way that a very anxious child may not enjoy.

Why it worksBabymouse wants to be invited to the popular girl's sleepover and gives away her best friend's favourite book to get there. Pink, black and white only, and it cuts constantly into Babymouse's daydreams - so the reader learns to tell fantasy from reality by the change in panel style, which is a real skill delivered painlessly.

Worth knowingAt 1,759 words it is the shortest of the graphic novels here and a strong seven-year-old will finish it in twenty minutes. The social cruelty of the sleepover plot is realistic enough to sting a child currently living it.

Why it worksPhoebe skips a stone off a unicorn's head, is granted a wish, and wishes for the unicorn to be her best friend - who turns out to be magnificently vain. It is a newspaper-style comic strip collection, so the unit is four panels rather than a chapter, which suits a child who reads in two-minute bursts.

Worth knowingATOS 3.4 with a lot of dry, adult-shaped irony - Marigold's vanity jokes land better at eight than six. Being a strip collection, there is no plot to pull a reader through.

Why it worksLi'l Petey teaches twenty-one baby frogs to make comics, so the book is a frame story wrapped around the frogs' own strips - drawn in crayon, in photo-collage, in stick figures. It is the Dog Man spin-off that turns a reader into a maker: children who finish it reliably go and draw their own, which is not something the main series does.

Worth knowingMuch more of a portfolio than a plot; a child expecting Dog Man's chase structure may find the middle baggy. The frame story leans on arguments about whether art has to be good, which is the most talky Pilkey has ever been.