The Diary of a Wimpy Kid # 1

BOOK REVIEW 6
1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series #1) April 2007 ISBN-13: 9780810993136
2. PLOT SUMMARY
The first book “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is a must read for parents, children, and teachers because it offers a window as to how a middle school student survives leaving in a home with an older bother bossing him around, annoying younger, and clever parents. Gregg wants to be accepted by his peers and be popular at school. But, Greg is short and skinny and cannot get the attention he wants. He settles for the class clown to draw attention to himself. He and his best friend Rowley are constantly getting in trouble with kids from school. It is hilarious to see how Gregg’s ideas backfire on him and get him and Rowley in trouble. For instance, on Halloween, Greg and his best friend, Rowley, taunt high school bullies. Rowley and Greg take refuge from the bullies at Greg's grandmother's house. The bullies retaliate by covering grandmother’s house with toilet paper. Greg learns to navigate his first year of middle school and to accept himself by being him.
3. SUMMARY ANALYSIS
The author Kinney organizes this book beginning with the school year, months, birthdays, holiday celebrations, and special events. Mr. Kinney gives the readers a realistic view of middle school life told in the first person point of view of a six grader that manages to survive his first year in middle school. This novel is realistic and hilarious because of Kinney’s cleverness to create cartoon or toothpick figures as illustrations. Mr. Kinney brings the themes of sense of belonging, identity, and the adolescent phases that teenagers go through in this novel. Greg’s physical appearance puts him at a disadvantage because he is skinny and short. Bullies can come around and beat him up. Greg and Rowley make fun of senior bullies on Halloween and the bullies get even by covering his grandmother’s house with toilet paper. Greg does not show feelings of regret that his grandmother has to help Gregg to take to take the toilet paper off the trees. In another occasion, his clever father watches Greg kick the little brother’s snowman. In turn, his father crushes to pieces the enormous snowball that Greg and friends have put together to make the biggest snowman.
Greg is struggling with identity and insecurity because he is desperate to get attention. Rowley is getting lots of attention and sympathy from the girls because he has a broken arm in a cast. The girls with their names on the arm cast and immature and silly Greg spills out that he had something to do with Rowley’s broken arm. As usual this backfires on him and no one wants to have anything to do with Gregg. Next day he goes to school with a bandage hand and forearm asking the girls to sign their name but they do not show any interest.
Kinney ends the novel by showing Greg as a mature sixth grader vs. the immature Gregg at the beginning of the story. Gregg realizes that being you its okay and that one does not have to be a class clown, taunting people, pretending, and hurting others to be content. Greg is content with himself now and what makes this better is that Rowley and Greg are friends again.
4. EXCERPTS
NPR Community
The cartoons don't merely illustrate the story, they advance it and split it off into a hundred digressive tributaries, working like the footnotes in Eliot's Waste Land.
5. CONNECITONS
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney