Below is the complete list of Dav Pilkey’s Dumb Bunnies books in publication order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Dumb Bunnies Books in Publication Order
- The Dumb Bunnies (1994)
The Dumb Bunnies was published in 1994 and is listed as book #1 in the Dumb Bunnies series. - The Dumb Bunnies’ Easter (1995)
Published in 1995, The Dumb Bunnies’ Easter is listed as book #2 in the Dumb Bunnies series. - Make Way for Dumb Bunnies (1996)
Make Way for Dumb Bunnies is a 1996 release and appears as book #3 in the Dumb Bunnies series. - The Dumb Bunnies Go To The Zoo (1997)
In the Dumb Bunnies series, The Dumb Bunnies Go To The Zoo is book #4 and was published in 1997.
About Dumb Bunnies
Dav Pilkey’s Dumb Bunnies series is one of his most deliberately ridiculous children’s creations, written under the playful pen name Sue Denim. The books follow a family of rabbits who do everything wrong with total confidence, turning ordinary situations into absurd, upside-down comedy. Where Pilkey’s Dragon books are gentle and emotionally warm, and Captain Underpants celebrates comic-book mischief, the Dumb Bunnies books lean fully into nonsense. Their humor comes from backwards logic, visual jokes, silly misunderstandings, and a family whose mistakes are so extreme that young readers can see the joke before the characters do.
The original book, The Dumb Bunnies, introduces the family and the basic comic idea immediately. Mother Bunny, Father Bunny, and Baby Bunny live in a world where common sense has almost no influence. They sleep under the bed, wash dishes in the washing machine, and treat ordinary household routines as opportunities for complete confusion. The jokes are simple but carefully built: the reader understands what should happen, then laughs because the bunnies do the opposite.
That pattern continues in The Dumb Bunnies’ Easter, where Pilkey applies the same backwards thinking to a holiday setting. Easter gives the series plenty of room for eggs, baskets, decorations, and family activity, but the bunnies’ misunderstanding of the celebration turns everything strange. The book works especially well for young children because the holiday framework is familiar, making the absurdity easier to catch. Pilkey is not asking readers to follow a complicated plot. He is inviting them to notice the joke, anticipate the mistake, and enjoy being smarter than the characters.
Make Way for Dumb Bunnies expands the bunnies’ world while keeping the same exaggerated tone. The title itself plays with the famous children’s book Make Way for Ducklings, and that kind of parody is part of the series’ charm. Pilkey often enjoys twisting familiar forms, whether superhero comics in Captain Underpants or pet stories in Dog Man. Here, he bends the wholesome family picture book into something much sillier, using the bunnies’ cheerful cluelessness to turn simple scenes into comic disasters.
The Dumb Bunnies Go to the Zoo gives the family another classic children’s-book setting. A zoo trip should be easy to understand: animals, cages, paths, signs, and family sightseeing. In Dumb Bunnies logic, however, even a basic outing becomes wildly confused. The zoo setting allows Pilkey to use strong visual contrasts between what the reader sees and what the bunnies believe is happening. That visual gap is one of the series’ biggest strengths, because children do not need advanced reading skills to understand that the pictures are telling a joke.
The Dumb Bunnies books are sometimes associated with the kind of silly humor that adults may underestimate, but Pilkey’s craft is sharper than the title suggests. The books are designed around reader confidence. Young children enjoy recognizing mistakes, predicting punchlines, and feeling that they understand the world better than the characters on the page. That is a powerful early-reading experience, especially for kids who respond to comedy, pictures, repetition, and absurdity.
Within Dav Pilkey’s broader bibliography, Dumb Bunnies shows his long-standing interest in books that give children permission to laugh loudly. The series is chaotic, goofy, and proudly illogical, but it also reflects Pilkey’s respect for a child’s sense of humor. He knows that nonsense can be a doorway into reading, and the Dumb Bunnies remain memorable because their foolishness is not random. It is carefully drawn, perfectly timed, and built to make young readers feel clever, amused, and eager for the next ridiculous mistake.