Hopefully you are enough of a book snob that you made your children read the book series before letting them watch the movies. These days it’s quite hard to stop the cinema blasting our kids with a popular title before we can get a book in their hands. Kids these days are usually pretty amazed when you tell them The Hobbit actually was first in book form before Peter Jackson sold it to the world.
Thankfully the Wimpy Kid series keeps on trucking out the books, even though the Hollywood money is probably still lining up. Author Jeff Kinney doesn’t appear to have suffered too much from what I call Rowling syndrome. It’s a nasty affliction that makes the sufferer think they are some form of literary genius just because they sold their first series, that then turned more and more painful to read as the series went on, to Hollywood and made a billion pounds.
My personal beef with the Harry Potter series aside, I enjoy the Wimpy Kid books, and they are still trucking out good ones. The latest installment is called The Long Haul. Greg and his family are off to Disneyland. Well, they are trying to get there at least. It wouldn’t be a Wimpy Kid story unless there were some trials and tribulations along the way.
What I like about this book and the series is that it has stayed true to its roots. Its easy to read format, combined with basic illustrations have always been a crowd favourite amongst my kids. From 7 through to 12, they enjoy them and there is no trying to add a bunch of complicated words or adult relationship themes into them in order to make the author feel like they are some form of literary genius… oh, sorry, I just don’t like Harry Potter books 4 through 7. Utter poop.
The bottom line… well figuratively, as there are still are few more lines to go, is that if your young reader liked the first half dozen or so of these, then a review is not going to sway you from yes or no-ing this one for their Christmas stocking.
REVIEWER: Drew Thompson
TITLE: Dairy of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
AUTHOR(S): Jeff Kinney
PUBLISHER: Penguin Random House
RRP: $17.99