Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is told entirely through Greg Heffley's diary entries, complete with his own simple cartoons, as he starts a new school year surrounded by kids who are suddenly taller, meaner, and further along than he is. Greg's solution is to drag his loyal best friend Rowley into a series of schemes to climb the social ladder, which gets complicated once Rowley starts becoming popular on his own without needing Greg's help. Jeff Kinney's novel, in this Penguin Books India edition, runs 228 pages and holds a 4-star average from 84 Google ratings.

The comedy runs on a specific engine: Greg narrates every scheme as though he's the reasonable one and everyone else is being difficult, and the gap between how Greg sees himself and how he's actually coming across is where most of the laughs live. Underneath the jokes, the friendship between Greg and Rowley is doing real work, since Rowley's growing independence forces Greg to confront how much he's been using the friendship to his own advantage rather than treating Rowley as an equal. Kids in the middle of their own version of the school social scramble tend to recognize both the appeal of Greg's shortcuts and the cost of taking them.