Middle schooler and middle child Greg Heffley is your typical underachieving, lazy, bad-influence kind of kid that the other parents want their kids to stay the heck away from. So that's exactly why his journal, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney, is such a hit with kids and adults alike. It's so much fun to read about all the trouble he gets himself into.
Straight off the bat, he tells you it's a journal, not a diary. When his mother went to buy him one, he specifically told her NOT to get one that said diary. So this is his journal, and don't expect to see him writing "Dear Diary" this or that any time soon.
He writes: "Thursday. I'm having a seriously hard time getting used to the fact that summer is over and I have to get out of bed every morning to go to school."
His older brother Rodrick tricked him one day by re-setting his alarm clock, dressing up in his school clothes, and waking him up in the middle of the night during the summer. He told him he had slept all the way through summer and it was time to go to school.
Greg fell for it, dragged himself downstairs to eat cereal, and only realized it was a joke when his father came down to scold him for making such a racket. When they went to chew out Rodrick, he was in bed, snoring. "I'm sure Dad thinks I've got a screw loose or something," Greg writes.
Once school starts, Greg is pretty disappointed to find he's been placed in the Gifted reading group, "because that just means a lot of extra work." He had tried to get put into the Easy group when they did the screening at the end of last year. He acted like he couldn't read the word, "book." But he figures his mother is real tight with the principal. So she probably stepped in to make sure he got into the Gifted group again.
For Halloween, he and best friend, Rowley (an easy-going boy) charge the little kids money to come into their Haunted House. It's really just the two of them screaming on either side of the kid under the bed. When one of the little kids curls up into a ball and refuses to come out, Rowley's father put an end to their Haunted House plans.
When Greg refused to fess up to some trouble he caused, and Rowley gets blamed instead, their friendship is in danger. And along the way, they have all sorts of adventures trying to make money, avoid work, and have fun.
The whole book is full of stick figure drawings that illustrate what's going on. Kids and adults alike enjoy the humor and crazy antics. This is perfect to get reluctant readers to actually read something for a change. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney is the first of a very successful children's graphic novel series, and it looks like Greg won't be stopping any time soon.
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