Funny chapter books with the same Greg Heffley energy.
My son just finished The Getaway and has started rereading The Long Haul for the third time because, in his words, the RV parts are “so cringe it’s good.“ He’s deep in the Wimpy Kid zone — that sweet spot where a book is funny because the main character keeps making terrible decisions and somehow we’re all supposed to feel bad for him. If your kid has also memorized Greg Heffley’s inner monologue and maintains they will not read anything without drawings on every page, here are eight chapter books that meet them exactly where they are. Illustrated narrators who are kind of terrible. School humiliation. Friendship implosions. The works.
Miles is the best prankster at his old school. Then he moves to Yawnee Valley and discovers he's been out-pranked by a mysterious rival. What follows is an escalating prank war, a reluctant alliance, and the kind of revenge plot that makes Greg Heffley look like an amateur.
Pick this one if they love Greg's schemes but want someone who's actually good at them.
Jack Sullivan narrates his zombie-apocalypse survival guide from a fortified treehouse with his friends, a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, and exactly zero adult supervision. It's Wimpy Kid meets The Walking Dead with monster drawings on every page and a protagonist who thinks he's way cooler than he is.
Pick this one if they want Greg's voice but with actual monsters.
Chase falls off a roof and wakes up with zero memory of being the school's worst bully. Suddenly he's nice, and everyone's confused, and he has to figure out who he was by watching everyone flinch when he walks by. Gordon Korman writes middle school cringe better than almost anyone.
Pick this one if they're ready for a narrator who's terrible but doesn't know it yet.
Andy and Terry live in a thirteen-story treehouse with a bowling alley, shark tank, and see-through swimming pool. They're supposed to be writing a book but mostly they're just surviving absurd catastrophes. Fully illustrated, deeply silly, and structurally closer to a comic than a novel.
Pick this one if they'll only read books that look like cartoons.
George and Harold hypnotize their principal into thinking he's a superhero named Captain Underpants, and the villain this time is Professor Pippy P. Poopypants, a man whose name is so ridiculous he tries to force the entire planet to change their names. Dav Pilkey understood the assignment.
Pick this one if they think Wimpy Kid needs more bathroom humor.
Jordan's the new kid at a fancy private school where he's one of the only Black students, and he's navigating microaggressions, code-switching, and whether to speak up or stay quiet. It's a graphic novel with the same illustrated-diary format as Wimpy Kid but trades the cringe comedy for something sharper and more honest.
Pick this one if they want the format but with something real to say.
Ivan is a silverback gorilla who lives in a shopping mall and narrates his life in short, punchy chapters with illustrations throughout. He's stuck, he's lonely, and then a baby elephant shows up and everything changes. Katherine Applegate makes you care about a gorilla the way Jeff Kinney makes you care about Greg.
Pick this one if they're ready to cry a little but still want pictures.
Astrid discovers roller derby the same summer her best friend ditches her for ballet camp, and the whole thing plays out in graphic novel panels with the same personal-disaster energy as a Wimpy Kid book. Friendship breakups, trying something hard, eating it on roller skates — it's all here.
Pick this one if they want a graphic novel about failing in public.
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Millennial dad in the PNW. Reading aloud with my daughter (8) and son (4). Honest takes on the books we actually read at bedtime.
About me →And refuses to read anything else, ever.
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On the hundredth reading of the week.
Yes, even the new episodes haven’t been enough.
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