15 Best Books for Second Graders That Are Actually Funny

Second grade is where the bookshelf starts getting interesting.

One kid is proudly hauling around a 240-page graphic novel. Another is making the jump into chapter books. Somebody else can read the words perfectly well but would still rather spend twenty minutes studying one hilarious picture.

Good.

They all belong here.

Hey, Story Seekers! I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. Readit the Book Worm is my childlike sidekick, and we've been through the Book Explorers library looking for funny books that earn their place with second graders.

Not books with the right age printed on the back.

For this list I'm asking what the book gives a second-grade reader.

Can it build reading stamina? Does the artwork make a longer book approachable? Is it a good first chapter book? Does it give a strong reader somewhere to stretch? Can a teacher read it aloud above the class's independent level? Is there enough comedy, action or general nonsense to make a kid want another chapter?

That last one is the important part.

Because the goal isn't getting through a book.

It's wanting the next one.

Every title links to our full review, and the Belly Laugh Scale number is the funniness score from that review. The order here is about reading progression, not funniness, so a three can outrank a five.

Quick Picks

• Best for a kid who says they hate reading: Dog Man
• Best step from comics toward chapters: The Bad Guys
• Best leap into a longer chapter book: Dory Fantasmagory
• Best gentler first chapter book: Mercy Watson to the Rescue
• Best for friendship and vocabulary: Bink & Gollie
• Best whole-class laugh: The Book With No Pictures
• Best for reading the pictures: Sam & Dave Dig a Hole
• Best point of view: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!
• Best funny suspense: Creepy Pair of Underwear!
• Best classroom community book: We Don't Eat Our Classmates
• Best read-aloud with no indoor voice: The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors
• Best math in disguise: The Cookie Fiasco
• Best negotiation lesson: Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
• Best second chances: The Bad Seed
• Best confidence builder: We Are in a Book!

What Makes a Book Work in Second Grade?

There is no single second-grade reading level.

Which is why this list holds graphic novels, illustrated chapter books, transitional readers, picture books and read-alouds, and why I'd be suspicious of any second-grade list that didn't.

Some second graders still lean hard on visual support. Some are ready for several thousand words. Some can follow fairly sophisticated stories when an adult is doing the reading.

Those are different reading experiences and they're all useful.

The sweet spot is a book with enough challenge to grow a reader without making every page feel like a chore.

Funny helps.

Funny helps a lot.

1. Best for a Kid Who Says They Hate Reading: Dog Man

By Dav Pilkey, color by Jose Garibaldi

Let's start with the dog-headed police officer.

Seems reasonable.

Dog Man is created when an injured police dog and an injured police officer are combined in one of the more medically questionable procedures in children's literature.

Now he fights crime.

Pilkey tells it through comics, speech balloons, giant sound effects, deliberately rough drawings, Flip-O-Ramas and short bursts of text that keep the pages moving.

Which is exactly why I want it here.

A kid can hold a 240-page book and think, "I can do this."

Then they do.

Reading level: Lexile GN390L, ATOS 2.6, 5,035 words, AR 1.0 point. The GN means graphic novel, and it's worth knowing that a GN390L isn't directly comparable to a prose 390L, because the measure only reads the text and the pictures are carrying a lot of the story.

Jungle Jimmy says: Don't write off all those pictures as an easier kind of reading. Kids are tracking panels, expressions, dialogue, sequence and jokes at the same time.

Readit says: "Somebody tries to erase all the words out of books. Nobody is worried enough about that."

Belly Laugh Scale: 5/5, Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

Read the full Dog Man review.

2. Best Step From Comics Toward Chapters: The Bad Guys

By Aaron Blabey

Mr. Wolf would like everyone to know he's a Good Guy now.

Unfortunately his team is a snake, a shark, a piranha and himself.

They have a branding problem.

Blabey packs 144 pages with enormous black-and-white drawings, speech balloons, short text bursts, action, and characters whose faces usually finish the joke before the words do.

That makes it a genuine next step after heavily graphic books. There's more chapter-book structure here, and the visual support hasn't vanished.

Reading level: Lexile 530L, ATOS 2.4, Guided Reading Level P, roughly 2,311 words.

Jungle Jimmy says: A long book stops being intimidating when every page pays the reader back.

Readit says: "Mr. Snake keeps eating his teammate."

Team-building exercise?

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Bad Guys review.

3. Best Leap Into a Longer Chapter Book: Dory Fantasmagory

By Abby Hanlon

Dory is six with an enormous imagination, and her older brother and sister would occasionally like her to switch it off.

Not happening.

When they invent a witch called Mrs. Gobble Gracker to scare her into leaving them alone, Dory doesn't get less imaginative.

She gives the witch a starring role.

Hanlon mixes prose with pencil drawings, speech balloons, imaginary creatures and short episodes. There is noticeably more reading here than in Dog Man or The Bad Guys, and the pictures are still everywhere.

Which is why Dory sits this high.

She's a stretch.

Not a cliff.

Reading level: Lexile 650L, Fountas & Pinnell M.

Jungle Jimmy says: A second grader who wants a real chapter book doesn't need somebody to take all the pictures away to prove they've arrived.

Readit says: "Her fairy godmother has a beard."

His name is Mr. Nuggy.

This has not answered Readit's questions.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Dory Fantasmagory review.

4. Best Gentler First Chapter Book: Mercy Watson to the Rescue

By Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen

If Dory looks like too big a jump, meet Mercy.

Mercy Watson is a pig who lives with Mr. and Mrs. Watson, sleeps in a bed, and has devoted a considerable share of her life to hot buttered toast.

When the Watsons' bed starts falling through the floor, they decide Mercy has gone for help.

Mercy has gone looking for food.

DiCamillo keeps the chapters short across all eighty pages and Van Dusen keeps them full of bright, enormous, unmissable expressions.

It's a chapter book.

It just hasn't forgotten how much the pictures can do.

Jungle Jimmy says: My favorite kind of bridge book. The kid gets the chapter-book win without somebody immediately handing them a wall of gray text.

Readit says: "Mercy is not rescuing them. Mercy is hungry."

Correct.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Mercy Watson to the Rescue review.

5. Best for Friendship and Vocabulary: Bink & Gollie

By Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile

Bink and Gollie are best friends.

This does not mean they agree.

One disagreement involves a pair of outrageously colorful socks. Another involves a goldfish. There's also an expedition to the Andes that requires nobody to leave the house.

The three-story structure makes it feel bigger than an easy reader without asking a child to hold one long narrative in their head. Gollie's vocabulary supplies the stretch.

Reading level: Lexile 510L, ATOS 2.5, Guided Reading Level M, 858 words.

Jungle Jimmy says: Not knowing every word isn't a reason to put a good book down. That's frequently where the growing happens.

Readit says: "Gollie talks like she swallowed a dictionary."

Belly Laugh Scale: 3/5, Solid Chuckles

Read the full Bink & Gollie review.

6. Best Whole-Class Laugh: The Book With No Pictures

By B.J. Novak

By second grade, kids know how books are supposed to behave.

Excellent.

Now we can use that against them.

There's one rule: the person reading has to say whatever the words tell them to say.

Whatever.

Novak then makes that increasingly unfortunate for the adult holding the book.

This isn't here as an independent-reading challenge. It's here because second graders still deserve books that are simply fantastic when somebody reads them out loud.

A classroom full of capable readers still likes being read to.

Especially when the teacher has to sound ridiculous.

Jungle Jimmy says: This book requires commitment. You cannot mumble the nonsense and expect the room to do the work for you.

Readit says: "Make the teacher read it."

I had a feeling.

Belly Laugh Scale: 5/5, Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

Read the full Book With No Pictures review.

7. Best for Reading the Pictures: Sam & Dave Dig a Hole

By Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen

Sam and Dave are looking for something spectacular.

They dig.

And dig.

And keep making decisions that cause second graders to want to climb inside the book and steer.

Because we can see what they're missing.

Klassen's illustrations tell us things Sam and Dave don't know, which makes the kid holding the book the smartest person in the story.

Second graders are ready for that. They can read the words, look at the pictures, and work out that the complete story lives somewhere between the two. The whole book is 275 words.

Jungle Jimmy says: This is visual literacy disguised as two guys being spectacularly bad at digging in the right direction.

Readit says: "TURN AROUND!"

They can't hear you.

He keeps trying.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Sam & Dave Dig a Hole review.

8. Best Point of View: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!

By Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith

The Big Bad Wolf has a complaint.

Apparently we've been telling his story wrong, and he'd like to explain what really happened with those pigs.

Second grade is a good moment for this, because kids already know the traditional tale and are old enough to think seriously about who is telling a story and why that matters.

The wolf has a version.

Does that make it true?

Now we have something to talk about.

Jungle Jimmy says: Ask the room whether they believe him. Do not rescue them from disagreeing.

Readit says: "Still don't trust him."

Noted.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full True Story of the 3 Little Pigs review.

9. Best Funny Suspense: Creepy Pair of Underwear!

By Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown

Jasper Rabbit buys some underwear.

The underwear glows.

Eventually Jasper decides he'd rather not have them.

The underwear has other plans.

Peter Brown does an enormous amount of the storytelling through darkness, expression, framing and that radioactive green glow. Second graders can handle the suspense while still enjoying that the threatening object is, in the end, underwear.

That helps.

Jungle Jimmy says: A nice introduction to how pictures control mood. The same story feels completely different if those underpants are covered in cheerful yellow polka dots.

Readit says: "Bury them deeper."

He's developing a strategy.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Creepy Pair of Underwear! review.

10. Best Classroom Community Book: We Don't Eat Our Classmates

By Ryan T. Higgins

Penelope Rex has a school problem.

She keeps eating the other students.

I have visited a lot of schools.

This remains relatively uncommon.

Higgins takes friendship, empathy, classroom behavior and learning that other people have feelings, and hands the whole problem to a dinosaur.

Much better than a poster telling everybody to be kind.

Second graders may be past Penelope's exact first-day worries. They are absolutely not past navigating friendships, impulses, and the occasional classmate who gets on their nerves.

Jungle Jimmy says: If you can get the conversation without announcing that we're about to have an Important Conversation, you've won half the battle.

Readit says: "Don't eat people."

Concise.

Belly Laugh Scale: 5/5, Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

Read the full We Don't Eat Our Classmates review.

11. Best Read-Aloud With No Indoor Voice: The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors

By Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Adam Rex

Rock seeks battle.

Paper seeks battle.

Scissors seeks battle.

Eventually the three great warriors must meet.

Second graders already know the game, so Daywalt skips the explaining and goes straight to making it absurdly epic. Adam Rex makes ordinary household objects look like they're fighting for the fate of civilization.

This is not subtle literature.

Thank goodness.

Jungle Jimmy says: Give the battles everything you have. This book wants to be performed, not politely announced.

Readit says: "ROCK!"

We are apparently taking sides.

Belly Laugh Scale: 5/5, Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

Read the full Legend of Rock Paper Scissors review.

12. Best Math in Disguise: The Cookie Fiasco

By Dan Santat

Four friends have three cookies.

Everybody wants a fair share.

Proceed with the panic.

This is on our First Grade list too, and I'm keeping it here for a different reason.

A second grader can push past "how do they share?" into explaining why the solution works, finding another way to represent it, or connecting the cookie problem to fractions and division.

Same book.

Different conversation.

Which is exactly why grade lists and age lists aren't interchangeable.

Jungle Jimmy says: Stop before the characters solve it. The discussion is better when the kids have something at stake.

Preferably cookies.

Readit says: "Still saying get another cookie."

Your mathematical elegance is breathtaking.

Belly Laugh Scale: 3/5, Solid Chuckles

Read the full Cookie Fiasco review.

13. Best Negotiation Lesson: Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type

By Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin

Farmer Brown's cows find a typewriter.

Soon they have demands.

When Farmer Brown refuses, the cows stop producing milk.

Now we have collective bargaining in a picture book, and it took a Caldecott Honor for the artwork that makes it go down easy.

Second graders don't need the vocabulary to follow the problem. They can track what each side wants, how each responds, why it escalates, and how a third party breaks the deadlock.

And because it's typing cows demanding electric blankets, none of it feels like a worksheet.

Jungle Jimmy says: Ask who has the better argument. You will get more than one answer.

Readit says: "Give them the blankets."

Negotiations concluded.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Click, Clack, Moo review.

14. Best Second Chances: The Bad Seed

By Jory John, illustrated by Pete Oswald

Everybody knows the Bad Seed is bad.

Including the Bad Seed.

But spend some time with him and the label starts getting less useful.

That's what makes it worth revisiting at this age. Second graders are old enough to talk about how somebody gets a reputation, whether one bad choice makes you a bad person, and whether changing means suddenly becoming perfect.

It doesn't.

The Seed is working on it.

That's more interesting, and more true.

Jungle Jimmy says: A character doesn't have to turn into a completely different person for the change to count.

Readit says: "He gets better. He's still kind of grumpy."

Sounds human to me.

Belly Laugh Scale: 3/5, Solid Chuckles

Read the full Bad Seed review.

15. Best Confidence Builder: We Are in a Book!

By Mo Willems

Yes, I'm putting an easy reader at the end of a second-grade list.

On purpose.

Gerald and Piggie discover they're characters inside a book and that somebody is reading their words out loud. Then they start playing with that person.

For most second graders the decoding here is easy.

That is not a problem.

Easy books have jobs too. A child can practice fluency, expression, timing, character voices and reading with a partner without spending every ounce of brainpower working out the words.

Sometimes a kid needs a stretch book.

Sometimes they need a book they can absolutely crush.

Reading level: Lexile 200L, ATOS 0.9, Guided Reading Level H, 256 words.

Jungle Jimmy says: Don't clear out every easy book because a child's reading level went up. Confidence deserves shelf space.

Readit says: "And you can make somebody else be Gerald."

There may be ulterior motives.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full We Are in a Book! review.

Which One Should a Second Grader Read First?

If you have a second grader who doesn't want to read, start with Dog Man.

Not because every kid needs the easiest possible book. Because the first job is getting a child to voluntarily open one.

If comics are already working and you want the next step, The Bad Guys.

For a first chapter book, Mercy Watson to the Rescue.

When that reader wants more prose and a longer story, Dory Fantasmagory gives them somewhere to stretch without taking the pictures away.

For friendship and bigger vocabulary, Bink & Gollie.

For a whole-class laugh, The Book With No Pictures or The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors.

For visual thinking, Sam & Dave Dig a Hole.

For point of view, give the wolf his day in court.

Reading Isn't Weightlifting

Don't retire a book like We Are in a Book! because a child can technically read something harder.

The winner isn't the kid holding the heaviest book.

A strong second-grade shelf has books they can fly through, books they have to work at, books they want somebody else to read to them, and books that make them wonder whether they could possibly finish something that big.

Then they finish it.

That's the moment worth engineering, and it's the reason this list is ordered by progression rather than by how funny I found each one.

Give them somewhere to go next.

If your reader is earlier than this, we sorted the same shelf for first graders. If you shop by age rather than grade, there's a five-year-old list, a six and a seven. And if the problem isn't skill but willingness, that's a different list entirely. And when they hit third grade, the spread gets wider still.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit