Greenwild
#1344.20 adjusted 4.17 for sample size in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 4 books Status Ongoing 2023–present Reading commitment Medium Pari Thomson Last reviewed 2026-10-18
Overview
Pari Thomson's Greenwild (2023-2025) is a middle-grade portal fantasy of botanical magic. Daisy Thistledown, raised on the road by her mother, an investigative journalist, is left at a boarding school while her mother takes a dangerous assignment, and when her mother disappears and Daisy is chased across London, she slips through a hidden door into the Greenwild: a secret world of green magic whose pockets lie hidden behind botanical gardens around the globe, home to the Botanists who guard it. With a botanical prodigy, a boy who can talk to animals and a cat with an attitude, she confronts a power that threatens green magic on both sides of the door, and the search for her mother leads on to Iffenwild, a city lost beyond the sea, and to Amazeria, deep in the Amazon rainforest. Its first book won the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize.
Portal fantasy · For Middle grade
Core Canon: Reading Order (4 works) counts toward ranking
Greenwild Pari Thomson
| Work | Year | Internal chron. | Canon | Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Greenwild: The World Behind the Door | 2023 | 1 | core | 4.14 (4,198 ratings) |
 | Greenwild: The City Beyond the Sea | 2024 | 2 | core | 4.32 (1,453 ratings) |
 | Greenwild: The Forest in the Sky | 2025 | 3 | core | 4.34 (723 ratings) |
Pari Thomson's botanical portal fantasy for middle-grade readers: Daisy Thistledown's search for her missing mother through the hidden pockets of the Greenwild, a world of green magic tended by the Botanists.
A Greenwild Adventure Pari Thomson
| Work | Year | Internal chron. | Canon | Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | The Frozen King | 2026 | 1 | core | 4.27 (33 ratings) |
Standalone adventures set in the Greenwild ten years after the trilogy.
Quick answers
- How many books are in Greenwild? Greenwild's Core Canon is 4 books.
- What is the reading order for Greenwild? Publication order, starting with Greenwild: The World Behind the Door. Full list and years in the Core Canon table above.
- Is Greenwild finished? Ongoing (2023–present).
- How much reading does Greenwild take? Medium reading commitment (estimated from 4 Core Canon books · ~1,096 pages).
- How is Greenwild ranked? #134 in this site's official ranking, based on 6,407 reader ratings across 4 Core Canon books. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #134?
Ranked #134 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 4.20 across 4 core books.
- A smaller readership (6,407 ratings), so the score carries less weight of numbers.
- Less than 0.01 behind #133, The Greatcoats (a finer tie-break level decides the order).
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
Why explore this universe?
Highly rated · 4 books · Ongoing · 6k ratings · Ranks #134 overall
Good choice if you want a moderate-length portal fantasy universe that's still ongoing, with new books still coming.
Reading order
Publication order (4 Core Canon books)
- Greenwild: The World Behind the Door (2023)
- Greenwild: The City Beyond the Sea (2024)
- Greenwild: The Forest in the Sky (2025)
- The Frozen King (2026)
Documented internal/story order
- Greenwild: The World Behind the Door (2023)
- The Frozen King (2026)
- Greenwild: The City Beyond the Sea (2024)
- Greenwild: The Forest in the Sky (2025)
Awards (verified)
- Waterstones Children's Book Prize (Overall), 2024: won: Greenwild: The World Behind the Door; Overall winner, per the publisher's description of the trilogy.
You might also like
Suggestions computed from what Greenwild and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.
- Fablehaven Portal fantasy / Urban fantasy · Ongoing · High commitment · 4.28
- The Faraway Tree Portal fantasy / Cozy fantasy · Complete · Medium commitment · 4.28
- Beyonders Portal fantasy · Complete · Medium commitment · 4.24
- Impossible Creatures Portal fantasy / Mythic fantasy · Ongoing · Medium commitment · 4.13
Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 4.20 across 6,407 ratings on 4 Core Canon books. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: Canon extension: Greenwild (Pari Thomson) accepted 2026-10-18
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
- Toppsta (series listing) Tier 2
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux (publisher description, via library catalogue) Tier 2
Last reviewed: 2026-10-18
Rule: Core Canon = the Greenwild trilogy, The World Behind the Door (2023), The City Beyond the Sea (2024) and The Forest in the Sky (2025), and The Frozen King (2026), the first standalone Greenwild Adventure, set ten years later; further Greenwild Adventures join as Core when published.