Lincoln Peirce
Lincoln Peirce is an author.
Peirce is a newspaper cartoonist who outlived newspapers. Big Nate began as a daily comic strip, a form that has been shrinking for the whole of his career, and he then did the thing almost none of his peers managed: he moved the character into illustrated novels for young readers, and that is where the audience lives now.
The books work because the strip taught him compression. Nate is a middle-schooler with an unshakeable belief in his own greatness and a school record that flatly contradicts it, and the format, prose broken up by cartoon panels and doodles, lets a joke land every page or two instead of every chapter. It is a structure aimed directly at children who announce that they do not like reading.
Peirce has also written animated shorts for Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and he created the animated Big Nate series that premiered on Paramount+.
Books (5)
Where to start with Lincoln Peirce
Any of these works as a first book, but Big Nate is the cleanest introduction, and it does what the whole series does: school, self-regard, and a scheme that collapses on schedule. Big Nate Strikes Again is the second novel and the one where the format properly settles into place.
Big Nate in the Zone and Big Nate, say good-bye to dork city offer more of the same, which is exactly what a reader of this age is asking for. Big Nate - Double or Nothing (What Could Possibly Go Wrong? / Here Goes Nothing) collects two books in one, so it is the better value if you are buying rather than borrowing.
Hand these to a child who bounces off chapter books. The panels carry the load that an unbroken wall of prose does not, and the jokes are pitched so that the adult reading over a shoulder gets something too.