Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Recently, I’ve been rereading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books that I have at home. Why? Definitely not because I’m procrastinating reading the next book on my list by reading a ton of short books and telling myself that if I read short books, it doesn’t take any time, but I’ve still already spent a week reading short books…. However, I now have the magnificent opportunity to compare my experiences reading this series in third grade, versus my experiences with them billions and millions of years later. 

If you somehow don’t know what the book is about, it follows Greg Heffley, a middle schooler going through life. I would even consider myself quite the expert on the series, as I did a whole project on it (even making a life-size cutout of Mr. Gregory) in the third grade. The only problem is that I don’t exactly remember what the book felt like in third grade—I’ll try to think really hard. First things first, I must’ve really enjoyed the books to have done a whole project on them. Second, I definitely thought they were funny. Third—I don’t think I thought about the books I was reading this much in third grade, so we only have the first two. 

I have a YouTube channel where I animate some of my book reviews! Be sure to check it out at: www.youtube.com/@theeccentricbookshelf.

Rereading it now, I definitely still enjoyed the books. I liked being able to turn off my brain and just read the words on the page, following Greg throughout his life, and the misadventures that happened along the way. The books weren’t much more than that, though. There wasn’t a big moral or any underlying metaphors, it was just a story. An entertaining one, but not a story with a lot of depth or discovery. It felt more like a shell, something that needed more. It had the base elements all set up, but if you tried to go deeper, you’d just break into the empty core. 

As to whether or not it was funny? Sort of. The books made me smile, and I wasn’t totally bored when reading them, but there wasn’t a joke that made me laugh out loud or even chuckle, really. It’s full of immature jokes that third grade me probably thought were funny, but aren’t as sophisticated or done with as much setup as the jokes I like now. But if I’m thinking about all the books together, and not going nearly as deep, they’re honestly not too bad. Like I said before (or wrote I guess), it’s a series that I can turn my brain off to and just enjoy. I don’t have to think. It’s not a series that’s meant to provoke thoughtful discussions, it’s a series to draw kids into reading, and keep them reading. If we’re just going off that, the series is one of the greatest series to have ever been written. Even if we aren’t? It’s still pretty incredible.