Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Double Down

Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid Double Down is a very funny diary for 9 year olds, kept by a boy who's fairly sure his whole life is secretly a TV show.

What happens

It's October, and Greg Heffley has a theory. Somewhere out there, millions of people are tuning in to watch him. So he makes a big entrance every time he comes out of the bathroom (that's when they run the adverts) and he's even come up with a catchphrase. Bite my biscuits!

His mum has a different worry. She thinks video games are turning his brain to mush. So she hands him twenty dollars for the school book fair, and he comes home with two giant googly-eyed pencils and a calculator that glows in the dark.

When she makes him swap it all for books, he picks the spooky series everyone at school is obsessed with. Then he can't stop reading them. Then the nightmares start (one involves growing a tail, which he quite enjoys until it gets stuck in an escalator).

There's LOTS of Mum in this one. She's convinced Greg is secretly special, and he takes you back through the evidence. A test for the clever kids' group where he wrote that Johnny is a show-off. A speech club he loved so much he pretended he still couldn't say his Rs.

Then there's the Balloon Brigade. The prize is a giant jar of sweets, so Greg ties a three-page letter to his balloon claiming to be a lonely child with no friends. Can you guess what happens when somebody actually finds it?

A mum and her very serious son turn up on the doorstep. Before Greg knows it he's stuck on a playdate in the middle of nowhere, being patted down for a missing Lego piece.

In Greg's version of events he's never once the problem. Your reader will spot where it's all going wrong long before he does (and that's where most of the giggles come from).

There's plenty of gross-out stuff too. The family pig gets into Greg's sweets and is sick in his brother Rodrick's van, and it only goes downhill from there. If your reader loves a bit of disgusting, they'll be delighted.

It's the eleventh of Greg's diaries, and it works fine on its own.

What to read next

If the book fair is the bit that lands, try Liz Pichon's Best Book Day Ever. Tom Gates has a school book parade coming up, a homemade costume to finish and one book in a series he's been hunting for ages.