How To Grow Your Geek: Parenting and More!

From the back of the book. -
” I’ll be famous one day, but for now I’m stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons. ” Being a kid can really stink. And no one knows this better than Gregg Heffley, who finds himself thrust into middle school , where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. In Diary of a wimpy kid, author and illustrator Jeff Kinney introduces us to an unlikely hero. As Gregg says in his dairy, ” Just don’t expect me to be all dear diary this and dear diary that.”  Luckily for us, what Gregg Heffley says he won’t do and what he actually does are two very different things.”

I have been hearing a lot about these little books, and with all the homework and math drama I have been going though; I have been looking for smaller books to read. So when I saw this on the shelf at my local bookstore and read the back of the cover, I was like this might be pretty good. And I was right……..for the most part.

Gregg is your typical teen boy, struggling with day to day life in middle school. He is skinny, a geek, and doesn’t have a lot of friends. But he is trying very hard to become popular at school, and wants very much to be remembered in the yearbook as someone cool He is also the middle child at home and is trying to fit in there as well. with a father that wants him to get into sports, a mother who is more worried with his education, (even to the point of showing up at his school as a sub one day.), a older brother who is into heavy metal music, and who loves to get anything embrassing on Gregg so he can tease him about it later on; and a younger brother named Manny who is just sooo cute.
Though out the book, we glimpse Gregg’s plans for stardom and his views of middle school and the other kids around him. I thought this was the best part of the book, and it reminds me of my own life and school; I too struggle still with trying to fit in. I loved the talk about school plays, dealing with school bullies, gym classes, and “The gross mystery cheese, that has been out on the school playground for ages.” That no one wants to touch or go near. (can find so pretty gross stuff on playgrounds, let me tell ya.) The ideas that Gregg comes up with, and his views of other people are pretty funny, and even though you know they will never work; in some cases you find yourself going yeah I would have or have tried that as well. (the part about building the world’s biggest snowman, Ashley and I myself have tried. With much the same results. hehe. So there is a lot about Gregg I could relate too.

But Gregg was very hard to like for the most part, and a lot of times he came off as a jerk. He lies, cheats, he is greedy, and very self centered. He also treats his best friend like dirt and totally uses him. At one point in the book, he and his best friend Rowley are made school crossing guards. Their job is to help kindergarten school kids get home at the end of there day. At one point, Rowley has to miss a day of helping out, but he loans Gregg his jacket. Gregg finds a worm on the side walk and terrorizes the little kids with it. A grown-up sees this and thinks it Rowley, he gets in trouble and loses his badge and job as a school crossing guard. All the time Gregg keeps quite about it, and never comes forward in his friend’s defense. Not wanting to get into trouble himself. That is no way to keep friends, or treat anyone for that mater.

But I don’t want to turn this into a bad review, because the book is pretty good. And the idea of a middle schooler writing in a diary is pretty funny and a good idea for a teen book. But I want to be very careful about my recommending this to other kids.
So let me do this, I been thinking hard about this and I think this will work.

Parents, get this book for your kids and read it with them, and talk about it as you do. Point out all the things that Gregg did wrong, his wrong-headed attitude of others, etc. Show your kids how this is not the way to go, and how it is not a good way to treat people. I worry that younger kids will read these books and make Gregg into the hero the back cover would suggest. Trust me, he is no hero. So use this book to help guide you kids into being better friends, and show them how being so focused on yourself and what’s good for you; is not the way to become the most popular kid in your class.

I am in no way saying this is a bad book, it is actually really good. Some of the stories are very funny, and the line drawings help move the story along. I just wish the author had made Gregg someone you could get behind and root for. He could have been a lot nicer as a person. That was my main issue with the book. He was just so hard to like.

If I was to grade the book from 1 to 10, I would have to give it a five. But if I was to grade it on what I have suggested, using it as a guide for you kids on what NOT to do, I would give it a solid 10.

So there you go, hopefully this came off as a good review. I worked very hard at being fair and not going the negative route. Please let me know how I did. And as always, thanks for reading these.

Darcy