Sam Krupnik Books in Order

The Sam Krupnik books spin off from the Anastasia series and give center stage to Anastasia’s little brother. Instead of seeing Sam only through his sister’s eyes, readers now spend time inside his head as he barrels through early childhood and the early grades.

All About Sam starts at the very beginning, with Sam narrating his own birth, babyhood, and toddler years in a funny, matter-of-fact voice. He reports on flushing things down the toilet, learning to talk, and driving his parents to distraction, all while being blissfully unaware of how outrageous he seems to the adults around him.

In Attaboy, Sam! he is old enough to take on a serious project: making the perfect homemade perfume for his mother’s birthday. Sam starts collecting every smell she says she likes and stirring them together. What begins as a sweet idea slowly turns into a hilariously awful concoction that he is still determined to present with pride.

See You Around, Sam! finds him furious that his mother will not let him wear new plastic fangs in the house. His solution is to run away to Alaska, where walruses have tusks that look like fangs and surely will not complain. As he says goodbye to neighbors and gathers supplies, the plan grows bigger and heavier until reality finally catches up.

In Zooman Sam the class celebrates Future Job Day, and Sam arrives in a homemade zookeeper costume. Given the chance to tell his classmates about a different zoo animal each day, he discovers how it feels to be the “most interesting person in the room” and how hard it can be to keep a promise.

The tone of the series is consistently warm and comic. The Krupnik family is loving but not perfect, and Sam’s mistakes are treated with affection rather than scolding. For younger readers, these books offer short chapters and plenty of humor. For older fans of Anastasia, they fill in the corners of a familiar family from a new angle, reminding us that every younger sibling has a story of their own.