Below is the complete list of Lincoln Peirce books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Big Nate Books
Publication Order of Big Nate Graphic Novels Books
Publication Order of Big Nate Activity Books
Publication Order of Big Nate Miscellaneous Books
Publication Order of Big Nate TV Books
Publication Order of Max and the Midknights Books
About Lincoln Peirce
Lincoln Peirce is an American cartoonist, writer, and children’s author best known as the creator of Big Nate, the long-running comic strip and book series about Nate Wright, a confident, disaster-prone sixth grader with a talent for turning school, friendship, sports, and family life into comic chaos. Peirce’s work sits at the intersection of newspaper comics, illustrated middle-grade fiction, and school comedy, with a style built on sharp timing, expressive drawings, and a deep understanding of how children see themselves as the heroes of even the most ordinary day.
Born in Ames, Iowa, and raised in Durham, New Hampshire, Peirce developed an early love of comics and cartooning. He studied at Colby College and later at Brooklyn College, and before Big Nate became his defining creation, he worked as a teacher. That classroom experience helped shape the world of Nate Wright. P.S. 38, Nate’s teachers, classmates, detentions, tests, lunchroom rivalries, and hallway dramas all feel exaggerated but recognizable. Peirce does not write school as a backdrop; he writes it as a complete social universe where small victories and humiliations can feel enormous.
Big Nate began as a syndicated comic strip in 1991 and grew into a broad franchise that includes strip collections, illustrated novels, activity books, compilations, and an animated television adaptation. The character’s appeal comes from contradiction. Nate is arrogant, impulsive, creative, funny, and often wrong, but rarely boring. He sees himself as a genius, future superstar, and irresistible force, even when the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. That gap between Nate’s self-image and reality gives the strip much of its humor, while his loyalty to friends and refusal to stay defeated keep him likable.
Peirce’s illustrated Big Nate novels brought the character to a wider generation of middle-grade readers. Books such as Big Nate: In a Class by Himself, Big Nate Strikes Again, Big Nate on a Roll, and Big Nate Flips Out use a hybrid format that blends prose, cartoons, lists, jokes, visual asides, and school-story plotting. The format is important because it captures Nate’s mind on the page: restless, performative, competitive, and always ready to turn frustration into comedy. Readers who enjoy diary-style and heavily illustrated fiction often find Big Nate accessible, but Peirce’s comic-strip discipline gives the books a tighter rhythm than many imitators.
Beyond Big Nate, Peirce created Max and the Midknights, a medieval adventure-comedy series that shows a different side of his storytelling. The books follow Max, an aspiring knight, through a world of quests, magic, monsters, mistaken assumptions, and comic reversals. While still packed with illustrations and jokes, the series allows Peirce to work with fantasy structure, ensemble adventure, and larger story arcs. It also reflects one of his recurring strengths: he writes young characters who want to define themselves before the adult world has finished deciding who they are allowed to be.
Peirce’s bibliography is best understood through his visual storytelling. Whether he is working in a four-panel strip, a school novel, or a fantasy adventure, his humor depends on expression, pacing, and personality. He understands embarrassment, exaggeration, friendship, competition, and the strange dignity children attach to their private obsessions. Lincoln Peirce’s lasting achievement is making Nate Wright feel both ridiculous and real: a kid who loses constantly, announces victory anyway, and returns the next day ready to try again.