Diary of a Wimpy Kid – The Deep End

Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Deep End is a very funny camping diary for 9 year olds, starring a family who badly need a break from each other.

What happens

The Heffleys have been living in Gramma's basement for two months. Greg has to share a futon with Rodrick. There's no TV and no bathroom down there, and bedtime is set by three-year-old Manny, so everyone's in bed before it's even dark. (Why they've got no money is, according to Greg, kind of a long story.)

Mum decides what they all need is a holiday. The trouble is they can't afford one, and nobody agrees on what counts as fun anyway.

Then Gammie rings. She wants Uncle Gary's old camper off her drive (Uncle Gary has run off to be a rodeo clown). Suddenly the whole family is heading for the open road.

What could go wrong? Quite a lot, as it happens. A man at the camping shop scares them silly about bears. Mum locks the boys' gadgets in a box with a timer on top. Their first swim is in a gorgeous empty lake that turns out to be a fish farm.

And that's before the river trip, the VERY smelly camper toilet and a night in the woods when a bear turns up for dinner. The scary moments are there for the giggles. Greg's panicking is half the fun, and he's fairly sure every bit of water has piranhas in it.

There's some bare-bottom humour too. Greg loses his swimming trunks in a fast river, and later there's a very shared shower block.

If you've got a reader who's ever been on a family holiday where everything went wrong, they'll recognise a LOT of this. Reading it is a bit like being stuck in the back of that camper with Greg for the worst summer ever, complaints and all.

Later there's an RV park, where the posh pitches have their own little lawns and the economy row is packed in tight. Expect a skunk siren, lights out at nine o'clock and showers that cost a quarter for three minutes of hot water. And whose three minutes do you think run out halfway through, with a head full of shampoo?

It's the fifteenth Wimpy Kid book. A new reader can happily start here.

What to read next

If the camper van was your reader's favourite part, try Jeremy Strong's My Brother's Famous Bottom Goes Camping. Nicholas spends his holiday putting up with a very daft dad too, and that family's camper van comes with a hen smuggled on board.