Review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw

After seeing all the news stories about the success of Jeff Kinney's series of "novels in cartoons," I decided to try one out. I purchased Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (book three in a soon-to-be 4-book set) this weekend along with some Lil Critter books for my oldest son.

I have to say, they're pretty similar. Both have a penchant for telling part of the story in words, (in the Kinney via diary entries), and the rest, maybe even the "real" story, in pictures. But calling the series hero Gregory a Holden Caulfield, as Kinney has done, is overstating it. Yeah, Greg's self-absorbed and unreliable, but he's much more the every teen/ every tween than I think Holden was ever meant to be. Sure, Caulfield might have helped define a generation of young people, but I'm not sure Greg holds that much substance.

To me, a better comparison for Greg and his wispy ways is Garfield. I absolutely loved Garfield when I was around 8-11, and I think the audience for this series is probably about the same, with some older teens probably liking it too. I laughed at the book's humor, but I think I would have been bowled over in laughter by it when I was younger, same as with Jim Davis' feline. As Greg hides in pile after pile of warm laundry, skooches over a heating vent in his mom's bathrobe for luxurious coziness, finds himself in embarrassing situations and often seems oblivious to anyone's cares but his own, he might as well be the cat without the fat. He has two parents instead of John, an older brother for the bully figures and a little brother for the Nermal role.

Not to judge the series by one book, but this one is cute, fun, and humorous. It's not very deep. I'm not sure scholars will be tracing existentialist themes in the books anytime soon (but I could be wrong), but the power of the series probably comes in Greg being the every-adolescent du jour.