A series entry that follows familiar beats and will be welcomed by its huge fan base.
Returning to one of his favorite topics, Greg Heffley creates profiles of the bullies thronging his middle school—which, inevitably, go missing.
Greg’s systematic notes, intended for his own protection (“I’m not sharing this stuff with anyone else…if other kids in my grade know what I know, then I won’t have any advantage”) detail the perpetrators’ numerous misdeeds. His panic is understandable when an inadvertent switcheroo leaves the binder in the hands of the vice principal. The resultant wave of detentions sparks a schoolwide hunt for the identity of “the Snitch.” Although the illustrations provide only two samples of the rap sheets, they contain an abundance of scenes of Greg and other victims slinking past so many hulking, predatory loiterers (all of whom appear to be boys) that it’s hard to tell which group is in the majority. The plot doesn’t offer many surprises for returning readers. Having taken potshots at the school’s designated Anti-Bullying Month, learning karate for self-defense (tragically, Greg is put in a class with the Tiger Cub beginners, who are half his age), a teacher romance, and a disastrous Drop Everything and Read campaign, Kinney again has Greg drag his friend Rowley into a dangerous scheme that leaves them both unharmed but more victims than victors. The bulbous-nosed, dot-eyed figures in the cartoon-style line drawings are all either black silhouettes or the color of the paper.
A series entry that follows familiar beats and will be welcomed by its huge fan base. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9781419782701
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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