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The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney - review

'The Diary of a Wimpy Kid' books are all about a kid called Greg who fills in his journal (not a diary!!) of all the misadventures in his life.

Everything Greg seems to do has hilarious consequences and his family are very funny. In this book it is summer vacation and even though it is nice and hot Greg insists on staying inside hooked up to his video games with the blinds drawn. His mother is tired of Greg being lazy and decides that this summer should be fun and packed with family activities.

This book was very good. My favourite character has to be Greg as he can be horrible but the audience always roots for him anyway! I really like the part when Greg's mum is forgotten by the whole family at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere - it is hilarious.

I recommend this book to readers around 10-13 who enjoy reading as it is quite easy to read, but it has some challenging words as well.

I give this a big 5/5 because I enjoyed reading it so much.

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Children's books: 8-12 years
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid
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DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

A novel in cartoons, from the diary of a wimpy kid series , vol. 1.

by Jeff Kinney & illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2007

Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.

First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.

Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.

Pub Date: April 1, 2007

ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Amulet/Abrams

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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MUSTACHES FOR MADDIE

by Chad Morris & Shelly Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017

Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.

A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.

Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Shadow Mountain

Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING

More by Chad Morris

by Chad Morris & Shelly Brown

by Chad Morris & Shelly Brown ; illustrated by Garth Bruner

DAVID GOES TO SCHOOL

by David Shannon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1999

The poster boy for relentless mischief-makers everywhere, first encountered in No, David! (1998), gives his weary mother a rest by going to school. Naturally, he’s tardy, and that’s but the first in a long string of offenses—“Sit down, David! Keep your hands to yourself! PAY ATTENTION!”—that culminates in an afterschool stint. Children will, of course, recognize every line of the text and every one of David’s moves, and although he doesn’t exhibit the larger- than-life quality that made him a tall-tale anti-hero in his first appearance, his round-headed, gap-toothed enthusiasm is still endearing. For all his disruptive behavior, he shows not a trace of malice, and it’ll be easy for readers to want to encourage his further exploits. (Picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-590-48087-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Scholastic

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999

More by David Shannon

by David Shannon ; illustrated by David Shannon

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Good Books for Catholic Kids

Guiding Catholic families towards the True, the Good, and the Beautiful

Review of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”

The basic problem is that the protagonist, Greg Heffley, is a lying video game addict who manipulates his friends, disrespects his parents, and doesn’t show personal growth to speak of in the story. I’ll break that down with details for you.

Greg is a liar. He lies to his parents, his teachers, his friends, and his peers. He’s not just any liar: he’s a skilled, sneaky one. For example, when his dad tells him to go play outside, Greg goes to a friend’s house and plays video games. Then he soaks himself in a sprinkler so it looks like he’s been running around working up a sweat, thereby deceiving his dad. On another occasion, Greg deceives his friend’s parents by sneaking in a forbidden violent video game in the case of an educational one.

Let’s talk about the video games. Greg lives for his video games, and he prefers violent ones. He describes car-racing as too babyish, and resents his friend’s contentment with such boring games. The more violent the game, the cooler for Greg. When Christmas comes, he sulks about not getting the particularly violent video game he wants and is ungrateful for all his other presents.

Greg has a rather sweet, slightly immature best friend, Rowley, whom he manipulates and bullies. He beats up Rowley using all the same moves his own brother used to beat him up. He makes fun of Rowley’s simpler tastes in video games and humor. On one occasion, he convinces Rowley to ride a big wheel down a hill repeatedly while Greg throws a football at his head to try to knock him off. This is the great friendship in the book, and I actually found it truly sad to read.

Greg has a abysmal view of adults in general. He considers them dumb and easily tricked. Unfortunately, in this story the adults are rather dumb and easily tricked. He repeatedly gets around video game grounding by sneaking off to game at his friend Rowley’s house. He tricks Rowley’s parents by sneaking in video games they have expressly forbidden in their home. Greg’s teachers are also sometimes taken in by his lies.

The ending of the book is supposed to provide a shade of redemption in one area of Greg’s life at least: he finally does something kind for Rowley. But here’s the problem: the kind act is telling a lie to get Rowley out of an embarrassing predicament. At this point, I was asking, really, Jeff Kinney? That’s the best redemptive moment you can come up with?

There are miscellaneous other problematic areas of the book. One that really bothered me was a scenario where Greg’s older brother left a bikini pictures magazine laying out and Greg’s littler brother took it to show and tell. This is supposed to be hilarious; it’s most certainly not what I want my 8-12 year old laughing about.

10 thoughts on “ Review of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” ”

Pingback: Concerning Turkish Delight ~ Good Books for Catholic Kids

I watched my now 8-year old grandson go from reading the type of books you recommend to reading Captain Underpants and now the Wimpy Kid books, both of which are provided each week by his school library. I abhor those books that contribute nothing toward his growth as God would have it. I spent an hour searching for anyone to agree with my judgement, but only found accolades. And I learned there are 14 of the Wimpy Kid books! After shutting down my computer, it suddenly occurred to me to ask for a Catholic review and I found your website. Thank you. I am going to pass it on to my son, the father of said boy, who has never been a reluctant reader, but now he’s reading junk!

I’m so glad you found this review helpful! These books definitely have a way of spoiling a child’s ability to appreciate wholesome, classic books. I think most parents have no idea the messages these books are conveying. I hope your grandson rediscovers his love for good books!

These books are horrible! My sister-in-law keeps buying them for my son, and my husband won’t agree to just ask her to stop. The worst part? Our son eats up the piggish, amoral, irreverent humor. They are a true reflection of what our society is coming to, and they glorify the opposite of all the values I am trying to teach. 😦

That’s a tough situation! I agree they are simply horrible books. I hope you can find a way to get them out of your home!

Thank you for this review! I saw the author of the Diary of A Whimpy Kid series, on EWTN news and it sounded like it was a fun but good Catholic series. I went out and bought the whole series for my 9 year old grandson. I am very upset with myself. I am very close to my grandson. He loves the series. At least now I know I need to have a conversation about them with him. Thank God, He led me here.

oh my goodness! i never realized how terrible these books are. my 17 year old is so into these books but now i will have to stop buying them. i will remove them from the household as i don’t want my child to be learning about manipulative liars. thanks brittany.

This is an invaluable review. Thank you!

My children were reading those books when younger, I wish I had read the before, but, oh, how much you rely on what the school recommends! It’s completely opposite to how I brought them up… So sad. I wonder what the author was like when younger and what brought him to write the series…

Thank you for this review. I had a feeling these books were not for the type of reading I want for my son, but your review just confirms it. THANK YOU!

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Book Review

Diary of a wimpy kid: no brainer (wimpy kid series #18).

Jeff Kinney
Children's Fiction , Graphic Novel

Readability Age Range

8 to 12 years old
Amulet Books
#1 New York Times bestselling author

Year Published

Greg’s crumbling old middle school is on the verge of being shut down. But what if best bud Rowley doesn’t end up in the same school? Yipes! Something’s gotta be done.

Plot Summary

Let’s face it, Greg Heffley’s time in middle school hasn’t been filled with a lot of woohoo s. Most of the time, middle school hasn’t even earned a woo ! (More like a boo.)

Truth be told, though, the crumbling old school itself has seen better days. The place is falling apart: from the lockers to the windows to the ceilings. Hey, one classroom has even been taken over by an infestation of bees. And nobody’s brave enough to do anything more than lock the door and hope for a good honey crop.

Of course, the school district has no money to fix anything. So there’s talk about boarding the whole kit and caboodle up and shipping the kids off to other area schools.

Which, to Greg’s mind, wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

I mean, it couldn’t be any worse , could it?

And who knows, maybe girls in the next school won’t treat him like a diseased leper.

Then Greg learns that Rowley, his bestest bud, will be sent off to a different school than him. And suddenly Greg’s hopes for non-leperdom take a back seat. No Rowley? That can’t stand.

Maybe there’s some great idea that the school can use to bring in an influx of cash. Hey, they could sell monthly platinum passes to kids that gives them extra leg room in class and concierge access to the teacher’s lounge. Or they could rename the school and sell the rights to a local business. 1-800-Ded-Bugs Middle School seems very appropriate.

Whatever the case, Greg’s gotta put on his thinking cap. His world depends on it.

Christian Beliefs

At one point, Greg’s mom wins a “Principal For a Day” school auction prize, and Greg gets to slip into the principal’s duties. But a number of less-than-fun responsibilities fall to him, such as solving a dispute between two teachers wanting ownership of a single school laptop. Greg remembers “a Sunday School lesson about a wise king.” He asks them to split the laptop down the middle.

Greg also muses about his lack of science knowledge, worrying that he might accidentally open a portal to a “demon realm.” He also says, “If you ask me, you shouldn’t go screwing around trying to bring the dead back to life. On top of it being wrong, it could also be pretty awkward.”

Other Belief Systems

The school district decides to shut power off to certain wings of the school. And Greg notes that the only student who liked the idea was probably a vampire.

Kids, wanting better grades on a test, light candles and make offerings at the feet of a statue.

Authority Roles

Other than his parents, who are loving and consistent in a humorous way, many of the other adults are either a bit odd or a bit mistrustful. One former school sponsor is sent to jail, for instance, for embezzling money from the school district.

And some of the teachers are less than great. Greg’s middle school Latin teacher (Latin in a middle school?!) turns out to know nothing about Latin. Instead, he teaches the kids a nonsense language (that Greg is surprisingly adept at). And a science teach gets so fed up with the students’ disinterest that he spices up his class by talking about the science behind gross things. But when students go to a state competition, the finals don’t “have a single question about farts or burps.”

Even the school principal is rather slipshod at his job and wants to see the school shut down. Greg also muses at length about the role of school in a kid’s life—touching on educational shortcomings; kids’ ability to absorb information; parental book protests; and (lightly and jokingly) touching on the idea of kids giving themselves new names. For instance, he notes that it wouldn’t be great if kids took on their video-game handles as names, such as: “Moldy_Toez_1989.”

The book also includes a number of toilet humor giggles, too. For instance, Gregory wonders if his actions as a child would inform any new name he chose, such as, “Gregory Bartholomew Poopypants.” We read quips about school urinals and smelly toilets. A toilet costume is suggested as a school mascot sponsored by a plumbing company. The school holds an assembly encouraging kids who spend too long in the bathroom to “get everything done in 60 seconds.” Etc.

Profanity & Violence

The only derogatory name-calling pops up in the use of the word “jerk.”

There are a few thumping tumbles and bit of goofy roughhousing in the book’s comedy mix. A guy has his ear accidentally punctured by a stapler, for instance.

Sexual Content

Greg does briefly attend another school, and a few of the girls look admiringly at him because he can read a clock (a rare skill in this less-than-studious-minded school).

Discussion Topics

Greg Heffley finds himself working through a number of school life issues in this latest book. Did any of them sound similar to your school? What do you think author Jeff Kinney was trying to say through Greg’s broad and silly struggles?

What is the importance of going to school? Will it make a difference in your life?

Early on, Greg worries that he isn’t absorbing as much as he should because he fills his brain with things that aren’t important, like “video game cheat codes and theme songs to old TV shows.” Do you think you sometimes do something similar? For that matter, do you think our brains can be over full?

Take a look at Proverbs 1:7 and Proverbs 18:15. What do you think these verses are telling us about learning?

Get free discussion question for books at focusonthefamily.com/magazine/thriving-family-book-discussion-questions .

Additional Comments

Jeff Kinney looks at school and learning through an admittedly silly lens. But he raises some interesting questions about the choices we make. And despite plenty of bathroom humor, readers can learn things scattered throughout Greg Heffley’s goofy situations, too.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

Review by Bob Hoose

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Well Book Reviews

No Brainer (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 18) Review: A Must-Read for Wimpy Kid Fans

Hardcover Book
Kinney, Jeff (Author)
English (Publication Language)
224 Pages – 10/24/2023 (Publication Date) – Harry N. Abrams (Publisher)

Introduction

No Brainer is the highly anticipated 18th book in the beloved Diary of a Wimpy Kid series written by Jeff Kinney. In this latest installment, Greg Heffley, the endearing protagonist , finds himself facing a daunting challenge: saving his crumbling school from permanent closure. As readers embark on this thrilling adventure, they will witness Greg’s determination and resourcefulness as he navigates through various obstacles. This blog post aims to provide an in-depth review of No Brainer, exploring its captivating plot and lovable characters that have made the series a favorite among children, parents, and fans alike. Let’s dive into the world of Greg Heffley and discover why No Brainer is a must-read for Wimpy Kid enthusiasts.

Plot Summary

At the beginning of No Brainer, Greg Heffley doesn’t seem too bothered by the impending closure of his school. In fact, he views it as a potential opportunity to escape the less-than-ideal middle school experience. However, everything changes when Greg realizes that the closure means being separated from his best friend, Rowley Jefferson. Suddenly, saving the school becomes a mission close to Greg’s heart.

As Greg embarks on his mission to save the school, he encounters a series of challenges that test his determination and resilience. One of the main obstacles he faces is dealing with school bullies who are determined to make his life difficult. Greg must find ways to navigate through their antics while staying focused on his goal.

Additionally, Greg finds himself entangled in the complex web of school bureaucracy. He has to figure out how to work within the system and convince others of the importance of preserving their beloved institution. This proves to be no easy task as he encounters resistance and skepticism along the way.

The plot of No Brainer follows Greg’s relentless pursuit to overcome these challenges and ultimately save his school from closure. Readers will be captivated by his resourcefulness and inspired by his unwavering determination in the face of adversity.

Character Analysis

Greg heffley.

Greg Heffley, the main character of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, takes center stage once again in No Brainer. Initially, Greg is indifferent to the impending closure of his school. However, as he realizes the impact it will have on his friendship with Rowley Jefferson, he becomes determined to save their beloved institution. Throughout the book, Greg’s determination and resourcefulness shine through as he tackles various challenges in his mission. Readers will admire his unwavering commitment and ability to think outside the box when faced with obstacles.

Rowley Jefferson, Greg’s best friend, plays a significant role in No Brainer. As Greg embarks on his mission to save the school, he also aims to preserve his friendship with Rowley. Rowley’s loyalty and support are showcased throughout the book as he stands by Greg’s side through thick and thin. Their friendship serves as a pillar of strength for both characters, highlighting the importance of camaraderie and teamwork in overcoming adversity. Readers will appreciate Rowley’s unwavering friendship and find themselves rooting for him just as much as they do for Greg.

The dynamic between Greg and Rowley adds depth to the story, showcasing the power of true friendship even in challenging times. Both characters bring unique qualities to the narrative and contribute to its overall charm and relatability.

Engaging Plot

No Brainer delivers an engaging plot that keeps readers hooked from beginning to end. The challenges faced by Greg in his mission to save the school provide an exciting and relatable storyline. Jeff Kinney skillfully weaves together humor, suspense, and heartwarming moments that will captivate readers of all ages. As Greg navigates through various obstacles, readers will find themselves eagerly turning the pages, eager to see how he overcomes each challenge and achieves his goal.

Well-Developed Characters

One of the strengths of No Brainer lies in its well-developed characters. Greg Heffley’s determination and resourcefulness make him an endearing protagonist. Readers will root for him as he takes on the mission to save his school and witness his growth throughout the story. Rowley Jefferson’s loyalty and unwavering support add depth to the narrative, showcasing the power of friendship even in the face of adversity. The interactions between the characters are authentic and relatable, making them feel like friends readers have known for a long time.

Importance of Greg’s Mission

The importance of Greg’s mission to save his school is a central theme in No Brainer. It highlights the value of friendship and emphasizes how change can impact individuals’ lives. Through Greg’s determination and efforts to make a difference, readers are inspired to stand up for what they believe in and take action when faced with challenges. Jeff Kinney beautifully captures these themes, leaving readers with a sense of empowerment and a renewed appreciation for the impact one person can make.

No Brainer is a must-read for fans of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. With its engaging plot, well-developed characters, and meaningful mission for Greg Heffley, this book is sure to delight children, parents, and fans alike. Dive into this latest installment and join Greg on his thrilling journey to save his school!

In conclusion, No Brainer is a must-read for fans of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. With its engaging plot, well-developed characters, and a meaningful mission for Greg Heffley, this book offers an exciting and heartwarming reading experience. Children, parents, and fans of the series will be captivated by Greg’s determination to save his school and the challenges he faces along the way. Jeff Kinney once again delivers a delightful installment that showcases the value of friendship, resilience, and making a difference. Dive into the world of Greg Heffley and join him on this thrilling adventure in No Brainer!

Fourth Wing (The Empyrean #1) Review: A Must-Read Fantasy Adventure

Nicole is an experienced literary critic and passionate reader. Holding a degree in English Literature, she offers insightful and engaging book reviews. Her deep understanding of literature and knack for uncovering a book’s essence enriches our content at WellBookReviews.

Book Review: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days'

Book Four in the Popular Series

Children's Book Reviews
Authors & Illustrators
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M.S., Instructional Design and Technology, Emporia State University
B.A., English Literature, Brown University

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" is the fourth book in Jeff Kinney’s humorous series of books about middle school student Greg Heffley and his trials and tribulations, most of which are of his own making. Once again, as he did in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," " Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules ," and " Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw ," Jeff Kinney has created, in words and pictures, an amusing “novel in cartoons,” although the summer setting does not allow for the scope of humor that a school year middle school setting does. As in the other books in the series, the emphasis in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" is on the general goofiness that comes with being a self-centered adolescent and the often unexpected (at least, to Greg) results.

The Format of the Book

The format of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" has remained consistent throughout the series. Lined pages and Greg's pen and ink sketches and cartoons work together to make the book seem like an actual diary, or as Greg would emphasize, “a journal.” The fact that Greg has a somewhat goofy outlook on life and is always trying to work everything out to his benefit and justify his actions makes the diary format particularly effective.

Each of the earlier books in the series focuses on Greg's daily life at home and at school. Each book also tends to focus on a particular family member and Greg's problems with them. In the first book, it's Greg's little brother, Manny, who "never gets in trouble, even if he really deserves it." While Greg also complains about Rodrick, his older brother, Rodrick doesn't take center stage until the second book, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules." In the third book in the series, the conflict between Greg's father's expectations and Greg's wishes is emphasized.

It's no surprise, then, to find Greg and his mother at odds in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days," but there are also some major conflicts with his dad. What a surprise it is to find all the action set in the summer rather than during the school year. According to Jeff Kinney, “I’m very excited about 'Dog Days' because it takes Greg out of the school setting for the first time. It’s been a lot of fun to write about the Heffley summer vacation.” (7/23/09 media release) However, the book loses something by not being set during the school year and not including the usual interaction between Rodrick and his brother.

It's summer and Greg is looking forward to doing whatever he wants, with an emphasis on staying indoors and playing video games. Unfortunately, that is not at all his mother's idea of summer fun . The difference between Greg's vision of the perfect summer and the reality is the focus of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days."

Recommendation

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" will appeal to middle-grade readers , but probably younger ones 8 to 11. While "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" is not the strongest book in the Wimpy Kid series, I think it will appeal to fans of the series. Kids reading the series know that Greg is over-the-top in terms of being self-centered. They understand the relationship between cause and effect in terms of what happens as a result of Greg's poor judgment and find it amusing. At the same time, Greg's thought processes, while exaggerated, mirror those of many tweens, which is also part of the appeal of the Wimpy Kid series. (Amulet Books, An Imprint of Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2009. ISBN: 9780810983915)

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Jeff Kinney Talks About Diary of a Wimpy Kid

A podcast interview with Jeff Kinney on The Growing Readers Podcast , a production of The Children’s Book Review .

Dive into the uproarious world of Jeff Kinney, the creative force behind the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, in this upbeat podcast episode!

Kinney spills the beans on how his bestselling idea sprouted from a simple journal meant to keep him on the work grind. With a staggering 275 million copies sold worldwide, the series has become a literary sensation, garnishing Kinney with a slew of well-deserved awards. Beyond the numbers, Kinney shares his aspirations for his books—shaping reading habits for kids and influencing the industry’s humor landscape. Get ready to laugh, be inspired, and join the Wimpy Kid revolution in this delightful exploration of literary magic!

Jeff Kinney Talks About:

How his college comic strip, Igdoof, garnered attention but fell short of syndication due to skill gaps and contracting challenges.
The idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid stemmed from his accountability journal, featuring text and illustrations resembling the book’s style.
Initially envisioning one big humor book for adults, Kinney eventually landed a multi-book deal for kids.
The excitement of becoming a New York Times bestseller and how the sustained success of the series unfolds.
He hopes the books instill a reading pattern in kids and influence humor in the entertainment industry.
Diversity and support for librarians, the importance of representation, and the vulnerability of librarians in the face of book banning.
Encouragement for kids to read about diverse experiences for empathy and character richness.
And, of course, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer !

Listen to the Interview

The Growing Readers Podcast is available on all major platforms. Subscribe Now .

Read the Interview

Bianca Schulze

Hi, Jeff. Welcome to the Growing Readers podcast.

Jeff Kinney

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, my gosh, it’s an absolute pleasure. I have so many questions and directions we could go in today, so it almost felt impossible to decide where to start. So, I will just come at you with a multilayered question here. So, I know that you didn’t grow up wanting to be a children’s book author. Your dream was to become a newspaper cartoonist. So, I want to know, what about being a newspaper cartoonist excited you as a kid? And did you always love to read, write, and draw, or was there a specific comic strip that caught your attention as a child that kind of made you want to go down that path?

Yeah, great question. When I was growing up in Fort Washington, Maryland, which is right outside of Washington, DC, our newspaper was the Washington Post. And so, every day that I went downstairs to eat my breakfast, eat my cereal, my father had already opened the newspaper to the comic section. And so that was always greeting me growing up. I also love to read comic books, but very specifically, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books that were written by Carl Barks. Those were the only ones that I really read. And so those two things had a big influence on me. Charles Schultz’s Peanuts and Bill Watterson’s Calvin Hobbs. Gary Larson’s The Far Side. “Berke” Breathed’s Bloom County. Those were the newspaper comics that I loved the most. And then, of course, I loved Carl Barks’s Duck Stories. So those things had a big influence on me, and they made me want to become a cartoonist myself.

I love that. I have really vivid memories of my dad reading the newspaper. I would hear him laughing and have to come running to see which comic it was. I feel we missed that a little bit by not getting newspaper deliveries. We read all our newspapers online right now. We have The New York Times subscription, so sitting down and opening the newspaper—I feel my kids have missed that a little bit.

Yeah. And it’s sad. Of course, there are so many things that have changed for the better in our world, but there are a lot of things that we’ve really lost. Something like record stores, for example. It’s like, yes, you can get your music right now at the touch of a finger, but it was better to go into a record store and to talk to the clerk and to run your hands through the LPs and look at the great artwork and listen to the music on the overhead speakers. Like, all these things have gone away for the most part, and we miss those things.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we miss them so much that one of our kiddos got a record player for Christmas last year, and we have a record store in Boulder, Colorado, that we love to go visit for the records.

So, you attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s and ran a comic strip in the campus newspaper. And it has such a cool name. That’s fun to say. I want to make sure I pronounce it right as Igdoof that’s right.

Igdoof is right.

Perfect. And so, I think that’s what solidified your interest in being a cartoonist. So, I would love for you to tell me about that experience and your efforts to get your comic strip syndicated after college.

Sure. Well, it has a sad ending. I will give you a spoiler. But I didn’t become a syndicated newspaper cartoonist, but I had every feeling that I would. So, I started my comic Igdoof at Villanova, where I went for one year, and then I brought it with me to the University of Maryland. And we had a great newspaper called The Diamondback , which was a daily and I believe the circulation must have been about 30,000 daily at its height. And it really felt like everybody read The Diamondback every day. So, it was a big part of the lifeblood of our campus. If you went into the dining hall, everybody always had the Diamondback spread out before them. So, I wanted to be a part of that. Doing comics was a huge distraction for me because I was a computer science major and I basically failed out of my major because I was more interested in doing a comic every day. And I did that for two and a half years, I think it was, and I got a lot of attention. The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post wrote articles about this comic strip and how it was going to become the next big thing in comics. And, of course, I believed that and thought that when I stepped out into the real world, I’d become a real-life cartoonist. But it didn’t happen for me. It was a combination of things, mostly that I didn’t have the skills to be a professional artist, and then newspapers were starting to contract and so the opportunities were becoming less and less. I wasn’t able to land that. So, I tried for about three years, didn’t get any kind of encouragement, and decided to go in a different direction and worked on Diary of a Wimpy Kid for eight years before I showed it to anyone. But my failure to become a newspaper cartoonist eventually turned into success on the printed page.

I also love what you said in there that you really believed that you could do it, that you could be a comic strip creator. Obviously, having that self-belief to keep going is so important. Where do you think you got that level of self-belief from? Did it come from the people that were believing in you from the outside? Was it something intrinsic within you? Where did that self-belief come from?

Yeah, I got a lot of validation from the readers of the Diamondback. I could see people laughing at my strip and reading in the dining hall. And I also got other forms of validation along the way. And I didn’t always hit it out of the park, and sometimes my jokes didn’t land, but I knew that generally speaking, I was a pretty good joke writer. Again, I wasn’t a good artist, and I don’t think that I ever could have achieved what Berke Breathed has achieved or Bill Waterson has achieved. Like, I just didn’t have that technique. I’m not a fine artist. So, when I came up with the idea for Greg Heffley and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I had to sort of really embrace my limitations as an artist and draw as a middle school kid. So that’s where I was able to be successful, is to kind of stop striving for this adult expression, artistic expression, and embrace something that was a little bit simpler.

That’s so cool. So, in our house, we have the Calvin and Hobbes collections. My kids love all the Garfield books. And so, my youngest is eight, and he’s thrived on Captain Underpants and Dog Man. His go-to books right now are Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Yeah. Every night, when we fill out his school journal, and we have to say, I’m like, what are you reading today? For 30 minutes? And he’s like, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. So, my next question, I had to have him ask it. He had to leave for school, so I recorded his question. So, I’m going to play it for you. Yeah, give me 1 second.

Hi, I’m Kai Schulze, and I’d like to know where you got the idea for Diary of Wimpy Kids. That’s a great question. Where I got the idea from? At the time that I was working on my newspaper comic submissions, I was keeping a journal to kind of keep myself held to account. I was trying to make sure that I really was doing the work every day instead of playing video games and things like that. So, I kept this journal, and my journal looked a lot like the Diary of Wimpy Kid books. It was text and illustrations, and if you opened up one of my journal pages, you would say, wow, that looks really familiar. That’s how I got the idea for a different form of cartooning. I call it long-form cartooning. And luckily, my journals gave me the very idea I needed to become a successful writer.

So, you worked on the Diary for Wimpy Kid ideas for, you said, was it eight years?

Yeah, it was about eight- or nine-years total. That’s right.

Okay. Before it became the book series, I believe you were publishing it online in daily installments on funbrain.com.

That’s right.

Were you hoping by posting it there that you would get a book deal, or what was your thinking in that sort of era when you were just creating the stories?

That was just a way to make myself do the work. Funbrain. I worked for the company that owned Funbrain, and I just saw it as an opportunity to force myself to work every day. And I got a lot of validation from that because we had a huge audience. And I think that by the time I was finished writing my book online, I had accrued something like 20 million unique readers. So, it was a great way to get my work in front of people to see what was working to get some validation. And so that was a huge step for me in my path to becoming an author.

Well, and so I know that your first book deal wasn’t just for one book. It was like a multi-book deal, I have to imagine. I mean, I guess it’s every author’s dream to get the multi-book deal, but were you just going for, like, a one-book deal, and it happened to end up being a multi-book deal, or was that your angle the whole time you wanted the multi-book deal?

Yeah, it’s kind of a funny story, is that when I wrote Diary of a Movie Kid, I imagined it as just one big book. So, I thought that it would be a minimum of 700 pages long, like this brick. That’s what I wanted to do. And I also thought that it would be in the humor section of the bookstore, not the kids section. So, I thought that it would attract a grown-up audience. So, my publisher told me that they said that I’d actually not written a book for adults who like humor, but actually, a series for kids, which was a little bit mind-blowing because I had never thought of it as a kid’s book, believe it or not. And I also never thought of it as a series. So, my publisher when they told me that, I really had to think about it because this was not what I had planned. That being said, of course, I’m thrilled that the books were published for kids, but at that moment of getting that multi-book contract, it was cool, but I had a lot of dissonance because it wasn’t a part of my plan. But of course, that’s very exciting to say; hey, I’d like to get my book published, and for them to say, how about three? And I will say, the advances were pretty low, so it wasn’t life-changing money. But of course, I was an unproven author, so that sometimes it’s what you get, right?

Exactly. Well, now you had the multi book deal, and the first Diary of Your Wimpy Kid book came out in 2007, and it ended up as an instant bestseller. So, what were you thinking at this point when it was just successful right out of the gate?

Yeah, that was really super exciting. And I remember my wife and I, we lived in a really tiny house, and I remember us just sort of jumping up and down the bed because it was so exciting. And it was funny because my books landed number seven on The New York Times list, and then it went to number eight and then number nine. And I was like, okay, well, here it goes, and it’s going to go off the list. But at my high school reunion or whatever, I can always say I was a New York Times bestselling author. So, it was really fantastic. And I had no idea that it would sort of rebound and climb up the list and then eventually get to number one. So that’s been pretty wild. In fact, it’s been sustained since the book came out in 2007. I think it’s only been off the list for maybe about three or four weeks in total in the past 16 years. So, it’s a real privilege to have that kind of longevity. And I really pinch myself every day about it.

That is just so incredible. I think you’ve even maybe surpassed the time that Harry Potter has been on the list, either in the series bestseller or it’s really close. Anyway.

Yeah, it’s funny because that’s a little bit of— I think I’ve been on the series list one more week than Harry Potter, which is hilarious because the reason the series list was created was because the Harry Potter books were Hogging all of the fiction slots. So other authors were having trouble breaking into the fiction list, and so they created this new list, which, well, they created a bunch of new lists, including the series list. So even after she had been on The New York Times list for weeks and weeks and years and years, they reset her to zero when she got on the series list. And so even though it looks like I’ve been on longer, the truth is that she’s been on longer by a factor of years.

I love it. Well, I feel as though you’re going to have to stick with me here because I just want listeners to really get the full idea of how popular this series is, even though I’m sure they all know and beyond the fact that there’s Disney movies and we see Greg hovering over New York City on Thanksgiving Day. But after just one— I’m going to read this from your wimpykid.com website. But—

After just one year, more than 100,000 copies were in print in the United States alone.

With each subsequent book in print, numbers continue to grow both in the US. And abroad. And there are now more than 275,000,000 copies of the series in print worldwide. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has been a permanent fixture on the USA Today Wall Street Journal and publishes weekly bestseller lists. As we just said, the series has remained on the New York Times bestseller list. Since the publication of the first book, for more than 775 weeks total. (That could be a little higher right now) and more than 350 weeks on the series list. And the books are currently available in 84 editions in 69 languages. And since its initial publication in 2007, the series has won many regional and national awards around the globe, including two Children’s Choice Book Awards and six Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for favorite book. And you’ve also been named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the mean.

That is just so incredible. So, here’s what I want to ask you because you said just a moment ago that when you first started out, you didn’t necessarily intend Diary of a Wimpy Kid for Kids. So, I want to know what impact you hope Diary of a Wimpy Kid has had on all readers and what impact you hope will continue to be on readers as you progress with the series.

I’m really hoping that when kids read my books that, it creates a pattern of reading for them that might extend through their lifetimes. I think that when a kid reads a book and gets to the end, it creates a feeling of satisfaction and closure. And I would like to hope that kids will remember what that feels like, even if they move away from reading, but that later on in their life that, they’ll pick up a book and remember the simple joy of just finishing a book. And I’m also really hopeful that my books have an influence on humor in general in the entertainment industry. I’m excited to hear about a kid who writes a book or becomes a writer for a television show that was influenced by my books because that will be really interesting to see what somebody else brings to the table. So that’s something I haven’t gotten to experience yet, is seeing those readers turn into writers. But I’m excited to see that.

And then back to also the fact that you were writing for a more adult audience originally. Now that you know this series is just beloved by so many kids, what is your driving force as you continue on writing the books? What really motivates you to just to keep going? Because 18 books is a lot of books to stick with the same characters. What keeps you motivated for the kids?

Usually, it’s the small stories. Last year, I was in Spain, and I ran into a teenager who was, I think she must have been 1920, maybe 21 years old, and she said that every year she and her friend they get the new Wimpy Kid book, and they take turns reading it to one another on Christmas Eve. And that’s their tradition. And I always remind myself, I say, that’s why I’m writing. Even if the lights go down on me, it’s still important to write the book for that kind of a reason. I’ve made money writing these books, of course, and I’ve had a lot of success. But it’s really motivating to me for those people who really enjoy the books and for whom they’re still special. Those are the people that keep me motivated to keep going.

I love it. Well, thank you. Please do keep going.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Well, on top of creating books for kids, you created Poptropica , which was named one of the Times 50 Best Websites. And you, along with your wife and your two sons, own a bookstore in Plainville, Massachusetts, which is an unlikely story. And you also go on multistate book tours with international visits with each new book release. So, what’s one thing that you do every day that you think would be the most surprising or the most relatable to listeners?

I don’t do this every day, but I often go to McDonald’s, and I go on my scooter and then, like, sit in the parking lot next to the dumpster and eat my chicken nuggets and listen to MSNBC on my phone while I’m also reading the news. I need all that stimulation. McDonald’s plus news plus listening to it and reading and all that right next to the dumpster so that when I’m done, I can throw my stuff right in the bin. So that’s a pretty good slice of life for me.

Oh, my gosh. This is hilarious. So, I’m a closet McDonald’s fan. My husband makes far too much fun of me, but my lucky number is seven. So, I like to order the number seven, which is a cheeseburger meal.

Right. Do you have any special— it’s like, okay, no pickles or any special part of your order?

No, I’m just a straight-up; give me the number seven with a Diet Coke.

Okay. There we go. I think the Diet Coke is a hilarious button to the whole order after you get McDonald’s, but I also want to be healthy, so a Diet Coke, please.

Exactly. It was like when I order a coffee with non-fat milk or a mocha, and then they’re like, do you want the whipped cream? And I’m like, yes, of course, I want the whipped cream.

Doesn’t that feel like a criminal, though? It feels, like, so gluttonous. It’s like, do you want the whipped cream on top of that? It’s like I feel ashamed, but, yes, I would, like, know.

Yes, I would like lots.

You know what they call it in if you order, sorry. A Coke. In the UK, oftentimes, the people I travel with they say, I’d like a Coke full fat. And I think that’s hilarious to say, full fat. But it really is a thing.

I don’t know. So, because I’m Australian, so a lot of British stuff kind of overlays, but that definitely is not an Australian thing. I’ve never heard that.

Yeah, the default, like, you can’t even. I tried to recently order a regular Coke at McDonald’s through the Kiosk thing, and I couldn’t. It was only diet only diet sodas. I don’t know if it was just that McDonald’s or if that’s, like, a thing, but if you want full fat, you got to say the words.

Wow. All right, well, good tip. I hope to visit McDonald’s in the UK so I can order a full-fat Coca-Cola. All right, well, so I want to know: before I started The Children’s Book Review and The Growing Readers Podcast , I was a children’s bookseller in Washington, DC. In a small independent bookstore that is no longer there. And so, I want to know what running your bookstore is like. An unlikely story with your family?

It’s probably less hands-on than it sounds, actually. My kids have both worked here as booksellers, but I have never stood behind the counter and sold a book. I am more of a bookstore owner, very involved at that level. But then also, I play host to the authors who come through here. So pretty much you name it, I’ve interviewed them on stage. We get people from Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, John Grisham, Matthew McConaughey, etc. Sometimes, they’re virtual; sometimes, they’re in person. But we’ve had quite a number of authors in the past eight years, and so that’s where I really intersect with the bookstore.

Yeah, that’s fantastic. I actually follow an unlikely story on Instagram, and I love seeing the little clips of authors that you’ve hosted there. And I’ve never been to your bookstore because I think I’ve only been to Massachusetts once a long time ago, but it just looks like the ideal. I just love bookstores.

That’s cool. Yeah. What’s been really cool is that I’ve gotten to go to so many bookstores. In fact, I wonder who has been to more bookstores than me because I do tour a lot, but I got to kind of take the best of the ones that we visited. In fact, the Tattered cover is a great one out there in Colorado that had an influence on our bookstore, and we just tried to take the best of the places we’ve visited and put those elements into our bookstore.

Okay, so then I have to ask this, since the owner of the bookstore, and maybe you’re not hand selling the books, but I’m sure that you’re going to know an answer to this. So, what are some of your favorite books and the booksellers in your store by other authors and illustrators that you guys just always have to keep on the shelves?

Well, that’s a great question. Well, the Big Nate books have been really popular here. Dog Man, of course, which you mentioned before. Anything by Tui Sutherland is really popular. Dan Santat won the National Book Award for his book, which is called A First Time for Everything .

He was actually on the podcast talking about A First Time for Everything earlier this year.

Yeah. And the Babysitter Club books do really well. Of course, anything that’s hot anywhere else is hot here. Spare by Prince Harry. And those types of books, the Britney Spears books, etc., are popular everywhere and are popular here. And you can always feel the effects of something that’s got national attention when you walk through our bookstore.

Awesome. Well, I also know that you’ve been using your voice to bring attention to book banning and highlighting the importance of diversity in reading and giving back to librarians. Sort of the little essence of that shows up in your latest Diary of Wimpy Kid: No Brainer .

Just a bit. Yeah.

I read that you donated or will be donating $100,000 to libraries and that you made some surprise visits to libraries along your latest book tour. So, just on those sorts of bigger topics, and I feel like each one of those, like book banning and the importance of diversity and just how wonderful librarians are, are episodes each on their own. But just in a nutshell, just tell me more about your feelings of giving back and just making sure that just the world in general that we live in is diverse, accepting, and inclusive.

Yeah, that is a big question. What’s been becoming more obvious to me is that librarians are really on the front line of the culture wars and their jobs. They’re very vulnerable because sometimes a district will say that a certain book is inappropriate, and the librarians have to make a choice: do I keep my job or do I put this book on the shelves which I think is appropriate? The overall effect of book banning tends to be that you’re removing books that are by nonwhite people or people who live a little bit differently. And the effect of that is erasure because kids really need to see themselves positively represented in books. They need to see their own experience reflected back to them. It’s important for kids’ mental health and also, it’s important for us as a society to reflect the diversity of the nation that we’re living in. So, on my book tour, we decided to celebrate librarians, and we kind of created a game show format and they could win money for their library, which was fun, but the key to it was celebrating librarians who are in a kind of a crisis right now. I think that they need to be celebrated, uplifted, supported by authors, by everybody in society, really, because if we’re marching towards this world where we’re going to have a few number of people determine what everybody else can read, that’s not a good place to be. So that’s why I’ve gotten a little bit more outspoken, and I think that going into this year especially, I’ll use my voice more.

Yeah, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for doing that. Thank you for obviously taking your level of success that you’ve had as being a children’s book creator and doing your part to use your voice. I think that’s so wonderful that you are doing that. So, thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think that I’m not doing enough, and I’m planning on ramping that up.

Awesome. Okay, well, obviously, we can’t end our chat because we haven’t really taken a deeper dive into the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer . So why don’t you just share a few thoughts that you have about writing it? You can share what made you tell this specific story. Feel free to maybe share a highlight from the book tour, like maybe something a kid shared with you about No Brainer . That would be amazing.

Yeah. No brainers. I realized that I’ve kind of moved away from the school setting in my books. My last book was about a rock and roll band, and the one before that was about sports, and the one before that was vacation. So, it’s been a while since I really spent a book in school, and so I decided to really fully embrace that and to really just write about school. And so, in a way, I made the school the main character of the book. And what I was sort of surprised by was that the book ended up becoming really a satire and kind of a commentary on the education system and the unfortunate and unintentional hilarity of adults trying to do the right thing and things coming out a little bit upside down. So, this book touches on topics like book banning, budget cuts, underperformance on standardized test scores, and all these other things that aren’t typical Wimpy Kid fair. But I thought it was fun to really send up the education system tonally. It feels a little bit different than most Wimpy Kid books, but I think it stands on its own, it stands on its merits, and it’s one of my favorites of the Wimpy Kid books, actually. And what’s funny is I don’t actually get a ton of feedback from kids just because of the nature of touring, especially the way that I tour now where I kind of do a show on a stage, and I’m not really meeting a lot of kids face to face. So that might surprise you that for most of my books, I don’t get almost any feedback directly from kids. So, I just have to hope that I’ve done a good job and hope that they keep reading.

Yeah, well, I can tell you that the kids love it. If you were, you’d be getting some amazing feedback. And I also have to say that after reading No Brainer , I just think that these books work on such a great level. The humor is so kid-friendly, but it also really resonates with the grown-up readers as well. So, I just highly recommend that.

Any adults who have kids that are reading these books, and you want to know what they’re about, pick it up and read it because it’s funny. It goes back to what we talked about right at the beginning, where the little comic strips and those little pockets of humor, I mean, adults need to not lose touch with that.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. That’s very encouraging.

Well, as we get closer to the end of our chat, I have to ask you, is there a question that you wished you’d get asked in an interview but that you’ve never been asked?

I don’t think so. I like it when people are frank and they ask me questions about things that they really want to know about because a lot of times when kids ask a question, they’re really asking a question they think that adults want to be asked. So, I think it’s sometimes hilarious when people ask questions that they’re actually curious about. And even you, at the beginning of the interview, were asking about what that was like in those early days. I don’t often get asked questions like that, so it’s fun. I’m happy to answer just about any question. And if you had an oddball one that you weren’t sure if you should ask, feel free to fire away.

I don’t have an oddball. I’m sure the minute that we go our separate ways today, something will pop in. I’ll be like, I should have asked Jeff that question. All right, well, then let me ask you this. What is the one most important point that you would love Growing Readers listeners to take away from our discussion today? If, just out of everything we spoke about, they took away one thing, what would you want that to be?

I’d love for kids to give books a chance that have characters that don’t look like them, that didn’t grow up like them, that have a funny-sounding name. I’d love for kids to expose themselves to more. I think it’s just really important for us to have empathy for one another to understand one another. And there’s nothing better than a book to deliver that kind of experience. So, when you read about somebody who didn’t share the same experience you had growing up, that’s what really makes you a more interesting and fuller person. So that’s what I ask kids to do. Pick up a book about somebody or by somebody who’s not like you because you’ll become a better person for having read it.

Yes, I love that. Well, Jeff, on that note, thank you so much for writing the kind of books that kids just gobble up like cookies because I think it’s so important that we have kids that read for pleasure. So, to piggyback on what you said, yes, please read books that are about people who are different from us and have different experiences. This is how we get curious about the world. But it’s also great to have a book that just is easy to read. It makes you laugh, and I mean, kids just love rereading your books, too. They’ll read it ten times over and over. So, thank you for writing those books.

Thank you so much for just giving us your time today and for being on the show.

Well, thank you. And thank you for giving authors like me a platform. It’s really lovely. And thank you very much. Hope I get to meet you in person one of these days.

That would be great. And ideally, I would like that to be an unlikely story.

There we go. Come on out. All right, thanks. All right, bye.

About the Book

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Book 18: No Brainer — Book Cover

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer

Written and Illustrated by Jeff Kinney

Ages 9+ | 224 Pages

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams | ISBN-13: 9781419766947

Publisher’s Book Summary: In No Brainer , book 18 of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series from #1 international bestselling author Jeff Kinney, it’s up to Greg to save his crumbling school before it’s shuttered for good. Up until now, middle school hasn’t exactly been a joyride for Greg Heffley. So when the town threatens to close the crumbling building, he’s not too broken up about it. But when Greg realizes this means he’s going to be sent to a different school than his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, he changes his tune. Can Greg and his classmates save their school before it’s shuttered for good? Or is this the start of a whole new chapter for Greg?

Buy the Book

Jeff Kinney is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and the Awesome Friendly Kid series. He is a six–time Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award winner for Favorite Book and has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. He spent his childhood in the Washington, DC, area and moved to New England, where he and his wife own a bookstore named An Unlikely Story.

For more information, visit ⁠⁠https://wimpykid.com/⁠⁠ .

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Bianca Schulze is the founder of The Children’s Book Review. She is a reader, reviewer, mother and children’s book lover. She also has a decade’s worth of experience working with children in the great outdoors. Combined with her love of books and experience as a children’s specialist bookseller, the goal is to share her passion for children’s literature to grow readers. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she now lives with her husband and three children near Boulder, Colorado.

Book Review: The Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: No Brainer

Pritha Banerjee intelligently reviews the Diary of A Wimpy Kid: No Brainer , taking a deep dive into the Wimpy Kid world and its secret appeal amongst young readers. Read all about Jeff Kinney’s 18th book and its place in the realm of young adult literature!

“Wimpy Kid” is every child’s dream confession. Why? Because young lads are told to sit in boring, consecutive, hour-long classes, compelled to wear restrictive, embarrassing and uncomfortable uniforms, often expected to work doubly hard after classes to complete their homework, and hate, absolutely detest, those spell-bees with their quizzical intonations and the over-hyped bland-tasting candy-rewards that come after. Wimpy Kid engulfs you in his story. He shows you a mirror-self, one who stands up to the bullies and participates in the tribulations of the world as a miniature adult. Is your child prepared for those punishing teachers, neglected talents, traffic in the restrooms and regimented (spoon-fed) lectures?

‘There’s no such thing as a good day in middle school. There’s just varying degrees of bad ‘

Children do not have a speciesist dislike for academia. They do, however, tend to surreptitiously forgo disciplinary measures. Most kids are forced to wake up early in the morning, which itself is proven to be extremely detrimental to the registering and processing of difficult information. Imagine having a surprise test or a tooth-grinding maths problem to solve in the wee hours of the morning. Is it worth resisting the chirping birds? Or even an extra minute of peaceful sleep? Wimpy Kid confidently says no, and there are many reasons for it. He tells us that more than half of his days are spent learning the wrong lessons, for his favourite Latin teacher, Mr. Leyton, doesn’t really know any Latin at all! It was way too late into the year when this was discovered, leaving our abject protagonist to a senseless fate of learning how to order a hamburger in a language that he now knows doesn’t even exist.

Intrinsic Honesty and The Virtue of Candid Confessions

Children above the age of three often give up fiscal rewards in order to continue being the honest selves that they are. The innate morality in (young) humans, as asserted by Thomas Jefferson, is a part of their developmental conscience, posited to be as natural as their arms and legs. However, children tend to lie when it comes to individual trials– when their fault is conspicuously visible or determinable. Removed from all obstructive cultural and social constraints, free in the private realm of a personal diary, the Wimpy Kid can mention his thoughts in his diary, employing an effective verbal mode to communicate his psychological inclinations and passive judgments regarding middle school.

In “No Brainer”, the Wimpy Kid illustrates the frustration of reckoning with the infrastructural dissonances in school that often interfere with his natural abilities and points of interest. His Social Sciences teacher, Mrs. Lackey taught them only about the places that she had planned to visit with her husband after her retirement. Similarly, he needed to bring his own protective gear to the laboratory as the School lacked funds to protect children via appropriate eyewear in case of accidents.

Is It Hard to Impress the Wimpy Kid?

Kids often get sick out of nowhere. Is it stress, a relentless aberration for the misunderstood world around them or the plethora of insubstantial problems they are forced to deal with? Well, Wimpy Kid is more than that. He displays, with examples, how his teachers are not interestingly expostulating Science or Arithmetics. In Communication Theory, it is well-known that presenters often fail to incorporate the 3 Vs: 55% of Visual elements (body language, facial gestures, active engagement), 38% of Vocal Modulations, and 7% of Verbal Content. Wimpy Kid, in his pre-adolescent frankness, explains how teachers often confuse the impact of each component. Ms Pritchard, although appointed as a Geometry Teacher, uses a smartboard to pick out a breed of puppy for her new home. On the other hand, Mr Rask intends to do his best, only to fail to incorporate his students’ attention to learning complex chemical bonds.

Why Do We Love Jeff Kinney?

In an interview with The Saturday Evening Post , Jeff Kinney talks about his elation in finding the right voice for children and his journey (spanning nearly 20 years) with Wimpy Kid. He tells young adults and readers alike to keep finding themselves in stories of compassion, comprehension and love, and to be inspired to become that aspirational or heroic self as they ‘grow up’. Striving for quality humour, he has created a spacious disposition for kids around the world and only promises to do better: “I wanted to be a cartoonist, and I got to be one, and now I don’t want to stop.”

Pick up “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer” from any Kunzum store or WhatsApp +91.8800200280 to order. Buy the book(s) and the coffee’s on us.

About the Author

Pritha Banerjee has completed her Masters in English Language & Literature from the University of Delhi. She was the recipient of the National Essay-writing Award from the SREI Foundation in 2014. Currently acting as a writer and translator for the Sankrityayan-Kosambi Study Circle, her latest publications include articles in ‘South Asian Women’s Narratives: Literatures of Their Own’ by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, FIPRESCI India, Muse India, Pashyantee: A Bilingual Journal, and Anustup Prakashani. Her upcoming translation of Rahul Sankrityayan’s ‘Dimaagi Gulaami’ is to be published by LeftWord Books. Find her on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook !

Inside the Pages: 10 Facts About 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'

Posted: April 18, 2024 | Last updated: April 20, 2024

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Review: DIARY OF A WIMPY KID is 'Most Likely to Delight Your Kids' at FIRST STAGE

Fun & spunky 60-minute musical based on best-selling books

Joshie says respect your parents, follow your dreams, and take your kids to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Musical at First Stage. Directed by Julie Woods-Robinson with musical direction by Paula Tillen, this spunky show runs through May 5th in Milwaukee and is a great one for young kids. Those kids may be familiar with the source material: a popular book series by Jeff Kinney, a 2010 live-action movie, and a 2021 animated movie on Disney+. The musical features a book by Kevin Del Aguila with music and lyrics by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler . If your kids aren’t familiar, here’s the gist: Greg Heffley is starting middle school and, ugh, it’s the worst. He’s navigating popularity, the Cheese Touch, his clingy bestie Rowley, his weird neighbor Fregley—all the while reminding us that he writes in a journal , not a diary (how embarrassing). I saw the Middle cast at First Stage, starring the spirited and strong-voiced Harper Fornstedt as Greg. And the great thing about this show? There’s not just one, but many amazing, hilarious, and meaty parts for kids. From Greg’s buddy Rowley (Marko Van Slyke) to the sassy Patty Farrell (Jenna Krysiak) to the Euro rockstar Joshie ( Alex Radtke ), Diary of a Wimpy Kid creates a lot of opportunities for splashy solo moments and laugh-aloud silliness. The songs are catchy (you’ll be humming “All About the Mom Bucks” at intermission). The choreo by Molly Rhode is super fun. And while there are adults in the cast (the hysterial Karen Estrada and Todd Denning), their parts are limited compared to the young performers. Scenic design by Casey Price adds to the kid-centric atmosphere—lots of hand-doodled elements on ruled notebook paper. It’s all very clever and eye-catching. Costume design by Jason Orlenko brings a bright, punchy vibe to the characters. Recommended for ages 5–12 and clocking in at an efficient 60 minutes plus a brief intermission, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon in Milwaukee. It might even spark some conversations about middle school, if your kid is in or approaching that milestone. But even if you don’t dig that deep, this entertaining production and talented cast and creative team will have you saying, “Zoo-Wee Mama!” I look forward to seeing what First Stage has in store for their next season in the Todd Wehr Theater. Photo Credit: Paul Ruffolo

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It's one of the most popular children's book series, and now, First Stage is bringing "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" to life on stage. Loosely following the first book of the series, the show blends humor with adventure as the characters navigate the uncertain world of Middle School.

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Jonathan Haidt Wants You to Take Away Your Kid’s Phone

By David Remnick

Illustration of Jonathan Haidt create out of iphones

Jonathan Haidt is a sixty-year-old social psychologist who believes that your child’s smartphone is a threat to mental well-being. His new book, “ The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness ,” which hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times ’ hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, has struck a chord with parents who have watched their kids sit slack-jawed and stock still for hours, lost in a welter of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, Facebook, and more. Haidt blames the spike in teen-age depression and anxiety on the rise of smartphones and social media, and he offers a set of prescriptions: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age sixteen.

When Haidt published “ The Coddling of the American Mind ,” with Greg Lukianoff, in 2018, he joined the culture wars, arguing that American colleges had come to value emotional safety over rigor; a self-described liberal and “David Brooks sort of meliorist,” he pushed back at the concepts of trigger warnings and microaggressions. But now his concern is not just with what he views as the overprotection of the young in the real world; it is also with a lack of protection for the young in the virtual world. Tech companies and social-media platforms, Haidt insists, by “designing a firehose of addictive content” and causing kids to forgo the social for the solitary, have “rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.”

In our recent conversation for The New Yorker Radio Hour , Haidt mapped out his argument in an orderly and professorial fashion. We talked about his theory, his research, his politics, and his opponents . The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

I read for a living, and I fully confess that when I’m reading, I have to put my iPhone on the other side of the room. Otherwise, its presence is always suggesting that something very interesting must be going on in my pocket. How does the phone truly operate in our minds?

For those listeners who remember the original iPhone in 2007—I got my first one in 2008—the original iPhone was an amazing Swiss Army knife. It was one of the greatest inventions of humankind. It was just marvellous. I pulled it out when I needed a tool. So if I wanted to get from point A to point B, hey, there’s a mapping function. If I want to listen to music, hey, there’s an iPod. That was amazing, and it was not harmful to anyone’s mental health.

But then a couple things changed in rapid succession, and the smartphone changed from being our servant to being our master, for many people. In 2008, the App Store comes out. In 2009, push notifications come out. So now you have this thing in your pocket in which thousands or millions of companies are trying to get your attention and trying to keep you on their app. In 2010, the front-facing camera comes out; in 2010, Instagram comes out, which was the first social-media app designed to be exclusively used on the smartphone.

So the environment that we were in suddenly changes. Now the iPhone isn’t just a tool; it is actually a tool of mass distraction. And we’re adults—we can deal with it. We’ve dealt with television. Most of us might feel like, If I got a handle on this, I could get some more work done. But adult mental health did not tank. The story for teens is completely different.

Before we get to mental health even, let’s get to differences in generation. I was raised in the “You’re sitting too close to the television, your eyes will burn out, your brain will turn to jelly from watching ‘The Three Stooges’ ” generation. But we survived radio. We survived television. Why is this so different?

One of the arguments I get is ‘Isn’t this just another moral panic? Socrates said writing was going to do us in! Whatever the young people are doing is going to be terrible’—and then it turns out not to be. So, I understand. It’s the boy who cried wolf. But this time is incredibly different. Because before, kids are watching TV and then, much later, there is a crime wave, but it can’t be tightly linked to TV. The evidence doesn’t show that when kids watch TV, they go out and hurt people or kill. They didn’t really find much about TV causing these problems, and there wasn’t really a mental-health issue.

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour Jonathan Haidt talks with David Remnick.

This time, there’s never been anything like it. Here’s what happened: the Internet came in two waves. In the eighties and nineties, we got personal computers. And then we got dial-up Internet. Slow, but it allowed you to connect to the world. It was amazing. The technological environment in the nineties was miraculous. We loved it. The millennial generation grew up on it. Their mental health was fine. A lot of the indicators of teen mental health were actually steady or improving in the late nineties, and all the way through the two-thousands—even up to 2011. And then in 2012 and 2013: boom. The graphs go way, way up. Mental health falls off a cliff. It’s incredibly sudden.

So you can give me whatever theory you want about trends in American society. But nobody can explain why it happened so suddenly in 2012 and 2013—not just here but in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, northern Europe. I’m waiting for someone to find a chemical that was released just in those areas that especially affects girls, and especially young girls. If someone can find that, you’ve got another story.

You put a name to this, that period between 2010 and 2015. You call it the “great rewiring” of childhood. What’s happening, then, in a granular sense?

What I mean by “the great rewiring” is this: the day that you change your flip phone for a smartphone, and you have a front-facing camera, Instagram, high-speed data—that’s the day that this device can become your master. Not for all kids, but for a lot of them. Kids are much more subject to this idea of “When the thinking gets hard, I start looking for entertainment.” I mean, I do this myself. When I’m trying to write something and it’s hard, I say, “What’s the weather? Let me go look at the weather. What’s in my e-mail?” I’m looking for anything that’s more interesting and easier than the thing I’m trying to do. But I have a fully-formed prefrontal cortex. Teen-agers don’t. Theirs is still in the child form. It’s not very good at impulse control. And so as long as you have all these toys and games and interesting things happening on your phone, it’s going to call you away. And that’s without social media.

Modern social media comes out in 2003 and 2004, with MySpace, and Facebook, and Friendster. That wasn’t particularly toxic. But then as the News Feed gets more important—Facebook pioneers the News Feed—they develop the Like button, which gives them huge amounts of information. They can algorithmicize your News Feed now. Twitter invents the Retweet button in 2009. Facebook copies it with the Share button.

Once we get super-viral social media in 2009 and 2010, a lot of things change. Now it’s not just “Hey, I’m bored, let me play a video game.” It’s “My phone is pinging me saying, ‘Someone cited you in a photo. Someone linked you in a photograph. Someone said something about you. Somebody liked your post.’ ” We’ve given these companies a portal to our children. They can control and manipulate them, send them notifications whenever they want. And the kids don’t seem to turn off the notifications. They seem to leave them on.

What you’re describing, if I’m understanding your book correctly—and I spent a lot of time with it—is a change in human consciousness.

Absolutely. And there’s a long history of interesting scholarship on how tools change our consciousness. Tools change our consciousness about how we relate to the world. Media theorists in the twentieth century talked about how TV makes you much more passive. You sit, you watch, you’re entertained. Everything becomes about entertainment. So when you get a change in technology, whether it’s a change in what we do or how we communicate or how we can affect the world, it changes our consciousness.

When I think back on my own adolescence, there was a lot of watching television, a lot of wasting time. Was that so much more socializing or psychologically healthy than spending time with the smartphone?

Well, watching television, though our parents complained about it, when you look back on it, my recollection was that it was usually social. You’re with another person, you’re talking about the show, you’re going to stop and go get something to eat. So you’re together. It is social.

Now what happens? I’ve heard stories from Gen Z. They go over to their friends’ houses sometimes—not that much—and they’re on their phones separately. One might be watching her shows on Netflix. One might be checking her social. So even when they’re physically together . . . There’s a wonderful phrase from the sociologist Sherry Turkle: “Because of our phones, we are forever elsewhere.” We’re never fully present.

You write that you want to raise the age of “Internet adulthood” to sixteen. Are you talking about preventing kids from accessing all of the Internet or just opening things like Facebook and YouTube?

The way that regulation works in the United States—Congress did only two things, and both of them ended up being terrible.

The first was the COPPA , the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The question there was how old you have to be before you can give away personal data, and a company can monetize your data, without your parents’ knowledge or consent. Representative Ed Markey—now he’s Senator Markey—was a lead author on the bill, and he thought, after consultation, sixteen. Sixteen is the age at which you get your driver’s license; you’re a little more independent. But various lobbyists united to push it down to thirteen, and there is zero enforcement. The way the law is written, companies can’t take your data without parental consent unless you’re thirteen—but they only enforce this if they have positive knowledge that you’re under thirteen. So Congress basically said, How about if kids can go anywhere on the Internet as long as they say they’re thirteen?

That’s one terrible law. And then Congress said, How about if companies have no responsibility for kids, and they can feed them whatever they want, and the parents can’t sue them?

What kind of legislation are you proposing?

The most important thing that we can do—the thing that is a game changer—is to raise the age from thirteen to sixteen.

Raise the age from thirteen to sixteen to do what exactly?

To be treated as an adult who does not need parents’ permission to sign a contract and give away your data. I don’t think we should be letting eleven-year-olds do that. And right now, we let them do it as long as they say they’re thirteen.

Now, you write—and this is a crucial part of your book—about sharp rises in rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm that began showing themselves in a very concerning way in the twenty-tens. And you say that girls were hit hardest. Why does it affect girls differently than boys?

There are several reasons. The first is that when kids got smartphones—and then tablets come in very soon, and all these devices—they made different choices. Boys gravitated towards coalitional violence. You know, sports-team things. They gravitate to video games and especially multiplayer video games, which are amazing. They also spend a lot of time on YouTube. They’re on social media; they’ll have Instagram accounts and things like that. But they’re not as into it as the girls are.

The girls spend a lot more time on social media. They went especially for Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest—the visual platforms. And their interactions are asynchronous. So the boys are laughing it up at the same time, together. Even if they’re in separate rooms, at least they’re communicating. But the girls are spending an hour crafting the post and the picture, and they’re waiting for other kids to comment on it, including strangers, and sometimes adult men. They’re waiting for strangers and friends to comment on it. And it’s not play. It’s performance. It’s brand management. So that’s just one of many reasons why social media affects girls more. It draws them in. It plays on their insecurities.

But the problem is, and I don’t think you’d disagree with me on this, that there are aspects of social media, just as there are of the Internet writ large, that can be terrific—whether it’s about finding community, or staying connected to friends, or interest groups that you can join and learn from. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? How do society, technology, legislation, or parents possibly separate out that which you describe as legitimately harmful from what is potentially beneficial, or fun, or harmless?

We could do the same thing for guns and alcohol and heroin and everything else. All of them have positive uses and negative uses. But we have a sense that with some of them the negatives so outweigh the positives that we don’t even let adults use them. I definitely see that there are some benefits to social media for adults. We have a need to find information and network. The Internet is not the same thing as social media. People say to me, “Oh, you know, during COVID , thank God for social media, because without that, how could kids have found each other?” To which I say, “Well, I guess they could have used the phone, texting, Skype, Zoom, the rest of the Internet, Google. . . .” You know, the Internet is marvellous.

I do a little demonstration. I ask people, “Suppose a demon came to us in the nineties with three boxes, magical floating boxes. And he said, ‘Here’s the first box.’ You can open as many as you want, but if you open a box, it’s going to take fifteen hours a week from you. The first box is the Internet. You get this amazing thing, but it’s going to take fifteen hours a week from you. Would you open it? Are you glad we have the Internet? Everyone is. All hands go up. Everyone is glad we opened that box. We think that time is actually worth it.

The next box is the smartphone. You open it up. If you get this thing, it’s this incredible digital Swiss Army knife. It’s going to take another fifteen hours a week. So now you’re up to thirty hours a week on this. Do you want it? What do you think? Are you glad we have smartphones? At that point, most hands go up. “I love my iPhone. I’m glad we have smartphones.” The great majority of adults say, “Yeah, I’m glad we opened that box.”

And once you think of it this way—you’ve already got the Internet; you’ve already got a smartphone. You’re at thirty hours a week. Now there’s a third box: social media. Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok. It’s going to be another fifteen hours a week. So now you’re up to forty-five hours a week. What do you think? Are you glad we opened that?

The great majority of people say no. The great majority of people say, “I wish we hadn’t opened that one.” People intuitively know, once you point out that social media is not the Internet. I’m not talking about keeping kids off the Internet. I’m talking about not allowing them to sign a legal contract. It’s not enforceable because they’re minors, but it is a contract—the terms of service—to give away their data, and some rights, to a company that does not have their interests at heart. That is using them as the product to sell to their customers who are the advertisers. That’s what I don’t want done to eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-year-old kids. I think they should be sixteen before they can be exploited in that way.

I also read your earlier book, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” And in it you critique emotional safety—the notion that we worship or valorize safety above all else. How does that jibe with your understandable desire to safeguard our emotional safety in this book?

Sometimes you want a high level of safety; sometimes you want a low level of safety. If there isn’t much in the way of danger—we don’t want to force kids to wear a bike helmet when they’re playing in a field. So it depends on the context. And my argument in the book is that we have vastly overprotected our children in the real world. We have to give them more freedom. And we have vastly underprotected them in the virtual world. We can’t even sue the companies that are harming them.

A lot of kids are getting severely damaged in many, many different ways. So am I contradicting myself? No—we’re overprotecting in one place, and I’m saying, “Lighten up, let your kids out.” And we’re underprotecting in another, and I’m saying, “Don’t let your kids spend nine hours a day on the Internet talking with strange men.” It’s just not a good idea.

You mentioned earlier in our conversation a critique of you as somebody who’s worried about moral panic or inciting it. How would you describe the critique, and how would you answer it?

The critique is what we started off with, which is that this is no different from comic books and television. And, you know, in Thomas Jefferson’s time, in the eighteenth century, it was novels that were supposed to excite sexual passion. So, it’s structurally logical to make that critique of me, but then we have to adjudicate it. And I’m speaking for Jean Twenge as well, who wrote “ iGen ,” and that Atlantic article that said how the smartphones destroyed a generation. Of course, she didn’t make up the title. The Atlantic did. They’re very good at making up catchy titles.

Was the title wrong?

At the time, it was risky.

What was the title again?

The title was “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”

Excellent title. From an editor’s point of view.

It sure is.

But was it wrong? Was it inappropriate for the piece?

At the time, many psychologists criticized her. They said, “You don’t have the data. You’re instilling panic.” And what she had was about three years of data in which these rates were going way up. Because it only really starts in 2013. And so she had 2013, 2014, and 2015 data. It takes about two years by the time we get the data published. She had only three years of rising problems. So, at the time, it was a risky title, and it could have been wrong—but it wasn’t.

The mental-health data has gone up every year since then. Now we have a bunch of experiments. It’s not all correlational. There are now dozens of experiments. Not all have shown a significant effect, but most do. We have longitudinal studies. And there’s the eyewitness testimony from the kids themselves. Now, if you talk to members of Gen Z and you say, “Would you rather live in a world in which TikTok were never invented?,” most of them say yes. They’re in a trap. I ask my students, “Why don’t you get off?” And they always say the same thing. “I can’t, because everyone else is on.”

So, back to your question. I’m glad that I live in a world in which there are skeptics who keep alarm-ringers honest. We see moral panics all the time and they end up being nothing. And it is up to me to say, “Actually, this time is different, and here’s why.” And that’s what I tried to do in “The Anxious Generation”—to say, “This time really is different.” In 2017, it wasn’t so clear. But I’m finding that now that COVID is behind us and our confusion is lifting, our kids are messed up. It wasn’t from COVID . It was actually in place before COVID . Everybody sees it. Most journalists who interview me will say, at some point in the interview, “You know, I read your book and this is happening to my daughter. She’s right out of your book.”

Am I wrong to discern a politics emanating from your work? Your book “The Coddling of the American Mind” could be put in a line with other books with similar temperament and argument, like Allan Bloom, for example, in “ The Closing of the American Mind .” Maybe you think I’m being unfair, but some think you are alarmist, an old guy panicking about the latest cool thing. An impression begins to form that Jonathan Haidt is a social conservative in some matters. Is that fair? Or is it wrong?

We live in an age of polarization with negative politics, where you’re judged by who you criticize. I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal. But the meaning of that has changed over the years, as the left has changed and as the right has changed. I still think of myself as a John Stuart Mill liberal. I want to live in a world, a liberal democracy, which creates conditions under which people can live lives that they want to lead. I’m also a David Brooks sort of meliorist, like, Let’s do the social science. Let’s think about systems. Let’s think in a really subtle way, not just in a narrow, quantified way. Let’s bring in cultural trends and let’s see—can we make things a little better? And so when I saw universities kind of going off the deep end in 2015, my co-author Greg Lukianoff and I were very alarmed. Does that make me a conservative?

You were seeing it in your own students?

I was seeing it in students at N.Y.U., and hearing it from other professors, and the stories were coming in from all over.

To answer your question: I love being a professor; I feel as though I am a member of an honored guild that stretches back to Socrates and Plato. And I see my institution getting corrupt. In social sciences, it’s not that people are doing things for money. But what I saw as corruption, I started talking about in 2011, was that in my field, everyone is on the left. All social psychologists are on the left. I gave a talk in 2011 where I went through many steps to find a conservative. I found one. I did find one. But everyone else is on the left. And I said, “You know, this is going to be a problem for us.”

Did you have an explanation for the “why” of that?

Yes. Part of it is normal self-selection based on personality. The arts are always going to lean left. It’s just the nature of the psychological differences between those with a conservative and liberal temperament. So the arts, the social sciences, especially sociology. If you’re questioning the social order, you’re more likely to be on the left—so there’s a natural ratio. And in the twentieth century, it was about three to one in psychology. Three to one, left to right. Let’s say that’s the natural ratio. I would never expect it to be fifty-fifty.

That was a quantifiable thing?

Yeah. There were a number of surveys of who professors voted for. There were self-reported surveys of whether you’re liberal or conservative, and they all converged on about the same thing. But my concern was not that we need balance. We don’t need evenness, but there has to be someone in the room who’s willing to speak up and say, “That doesn’t make sense.” And what I was seeing was any conclusion that was conducive to the progressive view would get waved into publication. “Oh, yeah, we want that one to be true.” But any conclusion that went against it would have to climb mountains, and the reviews would be scathing.

So just for example, Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams, at Cornell, had a line of work looking at gender bias in the sciences. To what extent do women in the sciences face a disadvantage in hiring and promotion? And what they found was that, over all, it’s a benefit. That over all—I can’t remember which decades they were looking at, but I think it was in the twenty-first century—at least in recent years, there’s not a bias against women. There’s a bias for them. I think that’s a perfectly plausible finding. It was incredibly difficult for them to publish that. Because what you need to show is that there is sexism and racism everywhere. That is the popular view.

Now, my argument in 2011 was, If we go down this road, if we continue to make fun of conservatives—which we do, you know; it was really a hostile climate for conservatives in the academy—if we continue to do this, we’re going to hurt our own science, and we are going to lose any support from Republicans and red states.

I’d been writing about the decline of trust in higher ed. Look, you asked me what my politics is. My mission is to use my research in moral psychology and that of others to help people understand each other across divisions and to help important institutions work well.

To return to social media and mental health: How do we put the genie back in the bottle? Tech companies have shown absolutely no interest in making changes that would be beneficial, like age verification. Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistle-blower, said that Instagram had been studying and trying to attract preteens and even considering how to reach still younger kids. So if tech companies aren’t going to do anything, what could be realistically possible with our current government, which gets nothing done and doesn’t seem to understand these issues very well?

On this, I’m actually somewhat hopeful. First, we shouldn’t expect the tech companies to go out of their way and lose users and profit to help our kids. It would be nice if they did, but, you know, once Facebook goes public and it has shareholders and a very high share price, it has to keep returns rising. The way things work in a free-market society, we don’t expect companies to not hurt people out of the goodness of their heart.

They’re going to behave like oil companies.

That’s right. We expect market mechanisms to matter. So if you hurt your customers, they’re not likely to come back. But this is a market failure because the kids are not the customers. The kids aren’t giving Facebook money. The kids are the product. Their attention is the product. The customers are the advertisers. So we have a market failure.

I used to teach a course at Stern on professional responsibility and basic business ethics. We always start the course off with understanding market failures, because when you have an efficient market with no market failures, you tend to have very few ethical problems. The only way you can get rich is by making other people better off. You make a product they want, they buy it, everyone’s happy. But there are four kinds of market failures, and companies are really incentivized to use them if they can, because they can make above-average profits if they do this.

The most important one, the really big one here, is called externalities. If I’m making tires and you’re making tires, and I dump all my toxic things in the river and you have to recycle them, I’m going to wipe you out because I have lower costs. And so that’s why we have government regulations that mandate a level playing field. You can’t impose costs on anyone else. Harmful externalities are all over the place with social media, and the government needs to step in, I think, to say, “You can’t do this.” And there are a lot of lawsuits against Meta and Snapchat now. So we’ll see how those go.

The second market failure is monopoly. Social-media companies are not full monopolies. There is competition, but the law of networks is such that once you become super big, it’s very hard to displace you. There are monopoly issues and over-control of a market. We don’t have an efficient market in social media.

The third is asymmetric information. If each party is fully informed about what’s happening, then we let them make their own decisions. But, here, we have no idea what’s happening. Research scientists can’t get data from Facebook or any of these companies. They know everything about our kids. They can target us. We know nothing about what they’re doing. So there’s a huge information asymmetry.

And the fourth market failure is the exploitation of public goods. So we have the ocean in common, and we don’t want people destroying it for profit. Sidewalks are also a kind of common good. We don’t let restaurants expand onto the sidewalk without some sort of regulation. And all of human attention is kind of a public good. What happened in just a few years is that a few companies, especially Google and Facebook, basically monopolized human attention for billions and billions of people. They took huge amounts of it, and we don’t have it back.

I’d be remiss in not at least presenting a critique of your book to you by professionals. So, there was a review in the science journal Nature , and it’s gotten a lot of attention for saying that your assertions that digital technologies are somehow rewiring our kids’ brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not quite supported by the science.

She said I have no evidence.

Well, I’m a polite guy. Candice Odgers, writing in this essay, says, “The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use.”

Her main charge was that I have no evidence. She said that I don’t know the difference between correlation and causation, and that she could use my writing in her Introductory Statistics class. And that’s just not true. When the data was mostly correlational, when it was almost all correlational, that was a fair criticism. And when Jean Twenge first wrote, that was a fair criticism. But there have now been dozens of experiments. So there are a variety of sources of data, different kinds of experiments.

So she just missed that?

Well, note her wording. She said that I have no evidence, and that was just an incorrect statement because I do have evidence. She is free to say, “I disagree with it. I think these studies have problems.” That would’ve been fine, if she’d said, “He presents experiments, but I think that they’re wrong.” That would have been a reasonable thing to say.

She was too categorical.

Yeah, to say that I have no evidence, I thought, was not really correct. So that’s what I said in my response .

So if it’s not social media causing these issues that you describe in kids, what else could it be?

That’s a good question. That’s the second problem with that review in Nature . I keep asking for alternative theories. I keep saying, “O.K., you don’t think it’s the smartphones and social media. What is it?”

Well, the world is terrible—that’s an alternate theory. That kids have a greater sense of ecological imperilment, that the politics of the world are pretty awful, that we’re facing an election in November just as we did in 2016 . . .

Oh, sure. Things are terrible. I agree with you. Things are terrible today. But go back to Obama’s first term. How terrible were things in Obama’s first term: 2008 to 2012? We have the global financial crisis. We’re recovering. The economy is getting better and better in his second term. That’s when mental health collapses? That’s when kids suddenly decide, Oh, my God, things are so terrible? And it’s not high-school kids who are reading the newspaper, perhaps. Middle-school girls are the ones who are most devastated by this. I don’t think you could make a case that all of a sudden, in 2013, eleven- to fourteen-year-old girls suddenly freaked out about the political state of the world. And this happened not just here but in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand. . . . None of that makes sense.

You and I grew up—I don’t know how you felt about this, but I thought, There probably won’t be a nuclear war this year, but what are the odds we’re gonna go twenty years? It seemed to me, like, There’s a good chance there’s gonna be a nuclear war, or that overpopulation is gonna kill us. I mean, there were a lot of things wrong with the world in the seventies, but our generation didn’t get depressed by it.

Finally, what will happen to the anxious generation, if nothing changes? Will they grow up feeling lonely and disconnected forever? Or is this something they grow out of?

We don’t know. What we can say is that young people in their twenties used to be the happiest people. There was what was called the U-shaped curve of happiness, where young people in their late teens and twenties are the happiest along with people in their sixties and seventies. And people in middle age were less happy. That was true across the world until a few years ago.

A working paper co-written by David G. Blanchflower, who’s an expert on this topic, was recently posted . The U-shaped curve of happiness is over internationally. He looked at thirty-four countries, and he found that the late teens and early twenties are actually the least happy now, or the most anxious—whatever the measure is. So, there’s been a huge change in young people. They used to be the happiest, and now they’re the least happy. Are they going to grow out of this in their twenties? It doesn’t look like it yet.

So what’s going to happen to Gen Z? There could well be lasting changes in their brains because we didn’t protect them in puberty and puberty is such an important time.

Essentially in the wiring of their brains.

The brain is literally rewiring, literally in the sense that neurons are seeking each other out. Neurons are fading away if they’re not used, synapses are forming or fading away. That happens very rapidly in the first couple of years of life, then it slows down. But in puberty it speeds up. So puberty is a time of really important rewiring, and traditional societies would give young people some guidance into how you make the transition to adulthood. We don’t do that. We give them an iPhone and an iPad and we say, “Here, we’re going to let you be guided into adulthood by a bunch of random people on the Internet chosen by algorithm for their extremity—that’s how you’re going to rewire your brain.”

So it is possible that there are lasting effects and that Gen Z, for the rest of their lives, will be more anxious and fragile. That is possible—we just don’t know. But the optimistic thing I can say is that there’s a lot they can do to make themselves better quickly.

I teach a course at N.Y.U. Stern called Flourishing. It’s an undergraduate positive-psychology course. And one of the most important things I do with the class is to go through their notifications with them. Two hundred to five hundred a day is typically how many the students get. And I say, “Turn off notifications for everything except for five apps. If you could only keep on five apps, like Uber—you surely want to keep on Uber and Lyft because you need to know, Is the car coming or not? But do you need an update from the New York Times or from The New Yorker or anybody else?”

Okay. The New Yorker. I tell them that. The New Yorker is different.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

But most of them get a notification every time an e-mail comes in. So if they get a piece of spam on e-mail, they get interrupted in their daily life. This has just become normal. They haven’t learned to protect their attention.

I try to convince them that your attention is the most precious thing you have. You could make huge amounts of money; there’s no limit to how much money you could make. But there’s a very severe limit on how much attention you have. You can’t get more of it. So who are you going to give it away to? Tell me which companies you’re going to allow to take your attention every day.

Once you phrase it like that, they turn off almost all their notifications, and we get remarkable results. They say that for the first time, they can think clearly. They’re able to do their homework. They’re less anxious. Modern life is fragmenting all of us, and it’s really doing a number on young people. If we reverse that, we improve their mental health.

But it seems that it requires the same discipline that it once did for someone to go off to a Zen Buddhist monastery to do what you’re prescribing.

No, turning off notifications is easy. We do it in class. Self-control is hard, but turning off notifications is easy. ♦

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Diary of a wimpy kid: double down, common sense media reviewers.

Halloween-themed 11th book a fun way to discuss kid scares.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

A reminder that you shouldn't stash food where pet

Bad behavior -- mostly lying -- has consequences f

Greg often makes the wrong decisions -- it's his h

Some mildly scary images when Greg and Rowley try

Educational Value

A reminder that you shouldn't stash food where pets can reach it, an explanation of what storyboards are when Greg and Rowley set out to make a movie, and a lesson about the publishing industry when half of Greg's class does a report on a mystery author of Goosebumps -like books that is really a group of authors. Also, a reminder to never make a group costume without an easy way out of it -- at some point you will need to use the bathroom.

Positive Messages

Bad behavior -- mostly lying -- has consequences for Greg, usually grounding and taking away media time, sometimes extra chores. Reading all scary books also has consequences -- characters are then scared by lots of little things. Makes fun of a modern kid idea about always being watched, reality show-style, which may remind kids that privacy is more valuable than notoriety. Also reminds kids that playing an instrument is a commitment and hard work and they should spend time exploring and developing their gifts. On the negative side, expect some potty humor as usual -- a butt drawn on a note, Greg sitting on the toilet, Greg falling into the toilet, a trip to a women's locker room, a pig puking, some farting.

Positive Role Models

Greg often makes the wrong decisions -- it's his hallmark and what makes his antics really funny to kids. In this installment he lies a lot: about being bullied so he won't have to eat the apple in his lunch, about why someone who finds his launched balloon needs to contact him, and more. And then he calls his family out on lying, especially his older brother. Greg's mom is always trying to bring out the best in her kids and insists that Greg put down the video games and work on finding his gifts. Greg's dad insists that Greg work hard practicing the French horn.

Violence & Scariness

Some mildly scary images when Greg and Rowley try to make a horror movie and gummy worms fake-kill two people. When Greg reads lots of Goosebumps-like scary books -- some covers are shown -- he has nightmares of pirates making him walk the plank toward a shark and a pitchfork mob chasing him. And more scares when Rodrick tells Greg that a monster would grab his ankle on the stairs and spiders crawl in your mouth at night. Talk of an uncle breaking his collarbone. And of course some shoving by bullies and a wedgie.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Double Down is the 11th book in the bestselling Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney . With most of the main action leading up to and following Halloween, this installment digs into some common kid fears: spiders crawling into your mouth while you're sleeping, a monster grabbing your ankles. And the main character, Greg, has nightmares after reading scary books in a Goosebumps -like series. He walks the plank toward sharks and is chased by a pitchfork-bearing mob. When Greg decides to make his own horror movie, he uses gummy-worm candy to pretend-kill two people. As usual in this series, Greg often makes the wrong decisions. Here he's caught lying -- with plenty of consequences -- and talks about how the rest of his family lies. Greg's mom remains the rock of the family, here insisting that Greg put down the video games and explore his many talents.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (3)
Kids say (14)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Absolute garbage, only read if you’re under the age of 5.

I hate this book so much, what's the story.

In DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOUBLE DOWN, Greg can't wait for Halloween. There's all that candy and a Halloween party at a classmate's house -- a party he's determined to get invited to. When Greg finds out the only kids invited are in the middle school band, he talks his parents into buying him a French horn. When he finds out the party is also only for woodwind players, he talks his friend Rowley -- a clarinet player -- into making a two-headed costume. In the meantime, Greg lets the spooky season get to him. Reading a bunch of scary books gives him nightmares, and he takes his brother Rodrick's tall tales way too seriously. Will a monster really reach for Greg's ankles on the basement stairs? Better send his little brother, Manny, down first just to be safe.

Is It Any Good?

With plenty of jokes about scary books, horror movies, and kid fears, this 11th installment of the best-selling series will find its best audience in your favorite easily scared kiddos. They're the ones who avoid the Goosebumps books at all costs, so they'll really appreciate the way author Jeff Kinney lampoons that series in Double Down . And they'll definitely laugh as Greg's mom takes over the once-cool annual Halloween party and turns the games into family-friendly fun. The moments with Rodrick may be a little tougher to handle -- Greg is definitely taken in by every tall tale his brother tells -- but there's a good lesson there: Big siblings know how to get to you. Don't be fooled so easily!

That's not the only lesson here. Parents who may cringe at all of Greg's lying will be happy there are plenty of consequences. And Greg's mom continues to want the best for her kids, insisting that Greg get out there and explore what he's good at. Greg, on the surface, seems to fail at everything, but his wild imagination still comes through. What other kid looks at a pile of gummy worms and thinks "Let's make a horror movie"? When Kinney sticks to his Halloween theme, the story feels fresh and holds together well. When he veers to strange flashbacks about piano lessons and speech class, it feels more like filler. But it's guaranteed this effort is enough to scare up more fans for Book 12.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about scares in Double Down . Greg started having nightmares after reading all those I.M. Spooky books. Do you get scared more easily after reading or watching scary things? Do you get nightmares like Greg?

At the beginning of the book, Greg imagines that he's being secretly followed by a TV crew. When does he like this supposed attention? When does he want his privacy? Would you like your life filmed all the time?

How does this Wimpy Kid book compare with others you've read? Which one is your favorite? Why?

Book Details

Author : Jeff Kinney
Illustrator : Jeff Kinney
Genre : Humor
Topics : Brothers and Sisters , Holidays , Horses and Farm Animals , Middle School
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Amulet Books
Publication date : November 1, 2016
Publisher's recommended age(s) : 8 - 12
Number of pages : 224
Available on : Nook, Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
Last updated : July 13, 2017

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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IMAGES

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 Book Review and Ratings by Kids
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #10) (Hardcover
Book Review on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series
Dog Days: Diary Of A Wimpy Kid (Bk4) by Jeff Kinney
Big Shot: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Book 16) by Jeff Kinney
Ecotastic Kid: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Book 1 Review

VIDEO

The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book
Talking about the first book of the Wimpy Kids series
Wimpy kid book review
Book review…. Dairy of a wimpy kid book no 1-6📚
Top 5 Worst Wimpy Kid Books
What your favorite Wimpy Kid book says about you!

COMMENTS

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Max, Millennium RIOT Reader. Tue 15 Apr 2014 10.00 EDT. 'The Diary of a Wimpy Kid' books are all about a kid called Greg who fills in his journal (not a diary!!) of all the misadventures in his ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an exceptionally captivating tale of a young protagonist's journey that began with tiny daily entries on a website and later expanded into the renowned book series we know and love. It's a storytelling saga that gave rise to a do-it-yourself book and a film feature. The main character, Greg Heffley, speaks to all ages, delivering a witty reading experience.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 Book Review
Our review: Parents say ( 93 ): Kids say ( 308 ): Begun in 2004 by a game developer as comics on the site www.funbrain.com, this "novel in cartoons" translates well to book form. Diary of a Wimpy Kid reads like little episodes in clueless middle schooler Greg Heffley's life, with a great sense of humor throughout.
Parent reviews for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1
My 7 year old daughters absolutely love these books. They're funny easy to read and a great introduction to books. The reviews I'm reading on here seem to be from parents who seem to want their children placed in a bunker or sealed from any form of imperfection in life. One said the main character is "lazy" SERIOUSLY.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #1)
February 10, 2018. ‭Diary of a wimpy kid: Greg Heffley's journal (#1), c2007, Jeff Kinney. Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a satirical realistic fiction comedy novel for children and teenagers written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. It is the first book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The book is about a boy named Greg Heffley and his struggles ...
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID
She even shoulders the bully's redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves "chanting island natives" and a "witch doctor lady.". Share your opinion of this book. First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End Book Review
Violence & Scariness. A capsized canoe, bees attack teens, kids have fis. Language Not present. Parents Need to Know. Parents need to know that Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End is the 15th book in the best-selling Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. Like the ninth book, The Long Haul, and the 12th book, The Getaway, Wimpy Kid Greg is on a family ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Producers often use a book as a springboard for a movie idea or to earn a specific rating. Because of this, a movie may differ from the novel. To better understand how this book and movie differ, compare the book review with Plugged In's movie review for Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You can request a review of a title you can't find at [email ...
The Deep End (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #15)
Jeff Kinney. 4.33. 22,423 ratings1,225 reviews. In The Deep End, book 15 of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Greg Heffley and his family hit the road for a cross-country camping trip, ready for the adventure of a lifetime. But things take an unexpected turn, and they find themselves stranded at an RV park that's not exactly a summertime paradise.
Review of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid"
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney is extremely popular with the 8-12 year old crowd. I see librarians and book clubs frequently recommending it as the perfect book to interest reluctant readers. I read it for the first time the other day in a little over an hour; it is more comic book than novel so it's a very quick read.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer (Wimpy Kid Series #18)
At one point, Greg's mom wins a "Principal For a Day" school auction prize, and Greg gets to slip into the principal's duties. But a number of less-than-fun responsibilities fall to him, such as solving a dispute between two teachers wanting ownership of a single school laptop. Greg remembers "a Sunday School lesson about a wise king.".
No Brainer (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 18) Review: A Must-Read for Wimpy
No Brainer is the highly anticipated 18th book in the beloved Diary of a Wimpy Kid series written by Jeff Kinney. In this latest installment, Greg Heffley, the endearing protagonist, finds himself facing a daunting challenge: saving his crumbling school from permanent closure. As readers embark on this thrilling adventure, they will witness ...
Review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth
By Tina Vasquez, for The Children's Book Review Published: December 2, 2010. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth. By Jeff Kinney. Reading level: Ages 9-12 Hardcover: 217 pages Publisher: Amulet Books (November 2010) Last month, in what was believed to be the biggest book release of the year, Jeff Kinney added another addition to his increasingly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series: The Ugly ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series by Jeff Kinney
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a satirical realistic fiction comedy novel for children and teenagers written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. The book is about middler schooler Greg Heffley and his struggles to fit in as he begins middle school. Afrikaans: Dagboek van 'n Wimpy Kid Arabic: مذكرات طالب Bulgarian: Дневникът на един дръндьо Catalan: Diari del Greg…
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown Book Review
One kid gets two tee. Greg calls his friend an idiot. Parents need to know that Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown is the 13th book in the best-selling Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. Like Book 6, Cabin Fever, there's a big snow storm, but in The Meltdown, Greg's mom forces him outside to play in it. The finale is an epic neighborhood snowball….
Book Review: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days'
Recommendation. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" will appeal to middle-grade readers, but probably younger ones 8 to 11. While "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" is not the strongest book in the Wimpy Kid series, I think it will appeal to fans of the series. Kids reading the series know that Greg is over-the-top in terms of being self-centered.
Jeff Kinney Talks About Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dive into the uproarious world of Jeff Kinney, the creative force behind the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, in this upbeat podcast episode! Kinney spills the beans on how his bestselling idea sprouted from a simple journal meant to keep him on the work grind. With a staggering 275 million copies sold worldwide, the series has become a literary ...
Book Review: The Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: No Brainer
21 February 2024 by Kunzum Review. Pritha Banerjee intelligently reviews the Diary of A Wimpy Kid: No Brainer, taking a deep dive into the Wimpy Kid world and its secret appeal amongst young readers. Read all about Jeff Kinney's 18th book and its place in the realm of young adult literature! "Wimpy Kid" is every child's dream confession.
Inside the Pages: 10 Facts About 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'
Samantha Davis, Actress and Co-Founder of Little People U.K. With Husband Warwick Davis, Dies at 53. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is a popular children's book series written by Jeff Kinney that has ...
Review: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' at Milwaukee's First Stage
First Stage's performance of the musical based on the beloved book is catchy and entertaining. Greg Heffley is stuck in the middle. At home, he's got an older brother named Rodrick who's a rock star (or at least he's in a band called Loaded Diaper), and he's got a little brother named Manny, whose every sniffle is adorable. And at ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul Book Review
Parents need to know that this is the ninth book in the bestselling Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney.This time Wimpy Kid Greg is stuck on a disastrous family road trip. There are small car accidents, some distracted driving, a biting pig, and some gunshots when the family station wagon gets too close to hunting grounds.
Review: DIARY OF A WIMPY KID is 'Most Likely to Delight Your Kids' at
From This Author - Kelsey Lawler. Joshie says respect your parents, follow your dreams, and take your kids to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Musical at First Stage. Directed by Julie Woods-Robinson ...
The Meltdown (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #13)
Jeff Kinney. When snow shuts down Greg Heffley's middle school, his neighborhood transforms into a wintry battlefield. Rival groups fight over territory, build massive snow forts, and stage epic snowball fights. And in the crosshairs are Greg and his trusty best friend, Rowley Jefferson. It's a fight for survival as Greg and Rowley navigate ...
First Stage brings 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' to life on stage
It's one of the most popular children's book series, and now, First Stage is bringing "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" to life on stage.Loosely following the first book of the series, the show blends humor ...
Superman Recruits Diary of a Wimpy Kid's Neva Howell to Play Martha Kent
0. Neva Howell, a character actor recognizable for her roles in movies like Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul and Logan Lucky, has reportedly joined the cast of James Gunn 's Superman in the ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway Book Review
Parents need to know that Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway is the 12th book in the best-selling Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. Like the ninth book, The Long Haul, Wimpy Kid Greg is on a family trip. This time the Heffleys head to a tropical resort. Greg, a first-time flyer, has many travel fears…. See all. Parents say (9) Kids say (32) age ...
Jonathan Haidt Wants You to Take Away Your Kid's Phone
Jonathan Haidt is a sixty-year-old social psychologist who believes that your child's smartphone is a threat to mental well-being. His new book, " The Anxious Generation: How the Great ...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down Book Review
age 18+. Absolute garbage, only read if you're under the age of 5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down is an absolute travesty. It's incredibly unfocused, constantly flip-flopping between different boring stories. Also the jokes aren't very funny, Greg is much more uninteresting, and the book overall feels like it had no reason to exist and ...
The good ending in 2024
This video was the first step to improving my bagging skills, and it changed my life. I now travel across America teaching more children how to improve on their bag skills and become a Walmart bag like I have. So I just want to say thank you for helping me on that journey. RAUHHH zoo wee mama. ⭐️🎧🪽 Aneese I think I missed a chapter?

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney - review

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DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

MUSTACHES FOR MADDIE

DAVID GOES TO SCHOOL

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Review of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”

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Book Review: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days'

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Jeff Kinney Talks About Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Dive into the uproarious world of Jeff Kinney, the creative force behind the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, in this upbeat podcast episode!

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer

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Book Review: The Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: No Brainer

‘There’s no such thing as a good day in middle school. There’s just varying degrees of bad ‘

Intrinsic Honesty and The Virtue of Candid Confessions

Is It Hard to Impress the Wimpy Kid?

Why Do We Love Jeff Kinney?

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Inside the Pages: 10 Facts About 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'

Spin-off Series

Awards and Honors

Themed Balloon in Macy's Parade

Film Adaptations

Global Reach

Greg Heffley

Unique Format

A Massive Series

Publication Debut

Origin as a Web Comic

Review: DIARY OF A WIMPY KID is 'Most Likely to Delight Your Kids' at FIRST STAGE

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