Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a beloved American fiction book series written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. Kinney is an American author and cartoonist, he was born in 1971 which makes him 51 years old, in 2021, more than 250 million copies of the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid have been sold globally, making it the 6th best-selling book series of all time, making Jeff Kinney one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people. As of 2022 Diary of a Wimpy Kid have 16 books and still counting! Diary of a Wimpy Kid first volume was published on April 1, 2007. Before that, FunBrain – an educational browser game website, and Jeff Kinney released an online version. It instantly caught attentions and became a hit, receiving approximately 20 million views by 2007.

So what is it about? the first book follows a preteen boy named Greg Heffley. This book act as his first journal, where he writes about his daily life. Greg begins his journal by writing about his irritation about being stuck in middle school with a “bunch of morons”, analyzing and introducing (mostly criticizing) other student. He also explains his future plan, which is to become “rich and famous” and then he will publish his journal instead of answering questions from reporters. As the series progress, we are able to see more and more interesting characters, funny incidents, and events such as “the cheese touch”, or when Greg accidentally goes into the woman’s bathroom, and my personal favourite Greg playing as a tree in the school play “wizard of the oz”. To sum up, this series is about a middle-schooler named Greg Heffley trying too hard to become popular and impress girls.

Other important characters include Rowley Jefferson – Greg’s best friend, loyal and caring, sometimes can come off as quite immature or having a childish manner which annoys Greg; Manny Heffley – Greg’s 3 years old little brother, who everyone except Greg’s parents can agree is spoiled; Rodric Heffley – Greg’s teenage brother known for his rebellious and unruly attitude who never misses any chance to play stupid pranks on Greg; Frank Heffley and Susan Heffley – Greg’s parent.

Why is Diary of a Wimpy Kid so good? Greg is a funny, interesting, irresistibly relatable character, it’s pretty creepy how relatable he is. It also teaches kids about different things like friendship or family values. It also introduces and helps develop a love for reading for millions of kids, even though it’s not the best-written book like “To Kill a Mocking bird” or “Moby Dick” or very educational but Kinney’s writing is so simple, yet it’s weirdly hilarious. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is millions of kids’ childhood, I remember reading these books over and over again and never getting tired of it, Greg’s annoyance toward everything and his solutions to problems never fails to make me laugh, almost like it have become a sort of comfort I seek when feeling down.