Greg Heffley is a middle school kid who is determined to make his mark. He has a best friend named Rowley, who through the entire book tries to teach to be cool. In the begining of the book Greg informes the reader of the importance of choosing the right seat on the first day of school. If you choose the wrong seat, you might end up sitting next to the unpopular kid for an entire year. The book then moves on to talk about Greg's family dynamics, and it comes at no surprise that he is the middle child. His dad constantly badgers him to do someithing other than play video games, and his mom is always pushing him to sign up for stuff like school plays. His older brother plays trick on him, and his little brother's needs are always met before anyone elses. Greg tried to make his mark by joining wrestling, until he realized his weight class left him going up against one of the strangest kids in school. Then he convinced Rowley to co-create a comic strip, so that they could gain instant fame. Greg and Rowley ended up in a big fight, and submited separate comic strips. Greg ended up winning, but did not gain the fame he hoped for, because his teacher changed the strip. The two friends then became part of the safety patrol, Greg thought this would be a great way to gain some authority. Everything was going great, they even missed part of Pre-Algebra and got free hot chocolate. After school one day Greg was taughnting the kinder kids with worms, and Rowley got blamed for it. This was the last straw for Rowley, and he and Greg went their separate ways. Greg tried to get a new best friend, and continued on his quest to be popular with out Rowley. Turns out Greg needed Rowley more than Rowley needed him. He tried to fix the broken friendship, but Rowley was not having it. Gregs plan to become the class clown also got foiled, when his mom showed up as the substitute. When a couple of older kids forced Rowley to eat the old cheese from the playground, Greg tells everyone that he moved it. He unintentionally gave himself the cheese touch, but in the process him and Rowley started hanging out again. When the yearbooks came our Rowley ended being voted class clown, but Greg vowed to remind him that he ate the cheese if his head ever got to big. The hightlight of this book is the characters that accompany Gregs journal entries, they add humor and bring each entry to life. The author did a great job at breaking up the entries with pictures to make this an easy read. This book along with the rest of the series has remained popular, because of the authors ability to relate to kids in this age group. Kids every where find a bit of themselves in a Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and will always come back for more. Kids in upper elementary to middle school will enjoy reading this book. Teachers can use this book to encourage students to write their own diary. It is a wonderful example, because it shows kids that not all diaries contain only the words. Students can also compare and contrast Greg and Rowley, and creat a character map on each.
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