Diary of a Wimpy Kid – The Third Wheel

Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Third Wheel is a very funny Valentine's dance disaster for 9 year olds, and it's the seventh of Greg Heffley's diaries.

What happens

Greg's school is holding a Valentine's Day dance and he does NOT want to turn up on his own. His plans for getting a date are, well, very Greg. On Uncle Gary's advice he spends his lunch money sending Candy Grams to himself. He writes a note to a girl on his desk, then forgets detention is held in the same room.

Then a girl called Abigail gets let down by her date, and Greg spots his chance. He asks Rowley, his best mate, to be his wingman. The plan is that all three of them go together, just as friends. What could possibly go wrong? (Quite a lot.)

The big night is the best part of the book. Rowley turns up with chicken pox, so Greg hides it with his mum's concealer, a silk scarf and a beach hat. Greg ends up squashed in the very back of Mr Jefferson's car. There's a posh restaurant they have to walk out of, a rowdy one where Greg ends up paying for everything, and a dance where the big lights have to stay on. I'm not telling you who ends up as the third wheel.

There's plenty going on at home too. Uncle Gary has moved onto the sofa, with a garage full of T-shirts that say BOTSON. Little brother Manny has a gang of imaginary friends, and Johnny Cheddar is the troublemaker. Greg even tells you what he remembers from before he was born.

Greg is a narrator you laugh at as much as with. Every disaster is somebody else's fault, and your reader will see the truth long before he does.

It's an easy book for a child to read on their own. It's set out as a handwritten diary on lined paper, in short dated entries. There's a cartoon on almost every page and a lot of the jokes live in the pictures and speech bubbles. Big capital letters do the shouting.

It's American, so it's Mom, middle school and dollars, but nothing that gets in the way.

What to read next

If they want more of Greg and Rowley, Dog Days is in the library too. It's the fourth diary, and Greg is trying to spend the whole summer holiday indoors with the curtains closed.