Diary of a Wimpy Kid – No Brainer

Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid No Brainer is a very funny school diary for 9 year olds, and this time it's Greg's whole school that's falling apart.

What happens

This is the eighteenth Wimpy Kid book. Greg's middle school has just come bottom of the entire state in a big test (it even made the TV news). So the principal gets fired and the old one, Principal Bottoms, is called back out of retirement.

Principal Bottoms has LOTS of new rules. You get one minute in the toilets. The straight-A kids get their own club with extra legroom and snacks, while Greg ends up perched on a scorching hot heater.

Then the school's famous fudgedogs get cancelled and everyone walks out in protest. Who wouldn't want a tofu dog dipped in hot fudge? (Quite a few parents, probably.)

And then the money runs out. The heating goes off after lunch. Kids have to put cups over the cockroaches. Most of the cleaners get swapped for a secondhand robot with googly eyes, which starts going to lessons and copying Greg's quiz.

One boy smashes through the back of his locker looking for buried treasure. Greg's locker is on the other side, so now there's a queue of kids using it as a shortcut.

There's even a day when his mum's auction bid makes Greg principal (you can probably guess how that goes). Then the school's whole future is on the line, and Greg might not end up at the same school as his best friend Rowley.

Anyone who's read the others will know it's literally like reading Greg's own diary. It's handwritten on lined paper with a cartoon on nearly every page. There are speech bubbles, big sound effects and words in CAPITALS, so it's super easy to race through on their own.

Greg's grumbles about school are very relatable. He reckons you're there for seven hours and spend about twenty minutes actually learning! If you've got a reader who thinks half the rules at school make no sense, they'll be laughing out loud.

It's worth knowing there's quite a lot of toilet humour, with a whole stretch about the boys' bathrooms. It's silly rather than nasty, but some families may roll their eyes.

What to read next

If they're after another middle-school diary full of drawings once they've caught up with Greg, try Rachel Renee Russell's Locker Hero. Max Crumbly writes his whole journal from inside the locker a bully has just stuffed him into, and it's in the library too.