Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Plot)

The five books:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Book 1)

Plot

The book begins with an introduction to Gregory "Greg" Heffley and his middle school life. The book takes place during his first year of middle school. It explains "The Cheese Touch" early on. It is very similar to the Cooties. In the book, a kid named Darren Walsh touches the Cheese with his finger. It is passed around the school, and later gets to a student named Abe Hall, who moved to California ends up taking the Cheese Touch with him. He is mad at his older brother, Rodrick. In the first half of the book, Rowley and Greg endure events such as Halloween, learning how to wrestle, and acting in the play of The Wizard of Oz as a tree. During trick-or-treating on Halloween night, Greg and Rowley are ambushed by a group of teenagers. They take refuge at Greg's grandmother's house and taunt the teenagers from there by making sounds and faces at them. This upsets Greg's mom, who orders them to come home. They do come home, but get a surprise when they come to the driveway—Greg's father drenches the two friends with a trash can full of water, thinking they were teens (he drenches every teen he sees on halloween, it's his tradition). On Christmas day, Greg writes that he gets very few presents that he likes. He does not get the one thing he really wants, a video game called Twisted Wizard, but instead gets a red sweater because his parents mix the presents up, an 8 x 10 picture of his uncle, and a Big Wheel. Manny gets all the presents that he wanted, making Greg more frustrated. Rodrick gives Greg a "L'il Cutie" book which he hates as much as his father who knows that. Greg slaps a bow on the book, and Rowley eats it up. Then Rowley rides a Big Wheel, and Greg accidentally threw a football to the tire of the bike, breaking his arm. At school, Rowley is surrounded by girls because he is injured, which makes Greg mad because he wants more attention from girls.

Greg and Rowley join safety patrol, and had to walk the morning kindergartners home. When Rowley isn't there, Greg chases the kindergartners with worms. He is wearing Rowley's coat, and Rowley gets accused of doing the whole thing. When Greg confesses to Rowley, Rowley tattles on him and gets promoted in safety patrol. Rowley and Greg get mad at each other. Slowly, they begin drifting apart and Rowley starts hanging out with Collin Lee; when he goes near Rowley's front yard, walkway, or house. Greg retaliates by spending his night at Fregley's. The sleepover turns into a disaster as Fregley eats a bag of jelly beans, which induces hyperactivity, and begins to chase Greg with a booger. Greg goes into the bathroom and then leaves and runs home in the middle of the night.

Nearing the end of the school year, Rowley's comic strip, called "Zoo-Wee Mama", is entered into the school's newspaper. "Zoo-Wee Mamma" was originally Greg's idea, but gets sick of it and let Rowley take up the pen, meaning that Rowley turns "Zoo-Wee Mamma" upside down. Greg tells Rowley to list him as the co-creator because it was his idea and joke punchline. Rowley then denies that Greg had anything to do with it. They get ready to fight but are then interrupted by the teenagers they taunted on Halloween. They showed up to pay them back and they force Rowley to eat the Cheese, but Greg gets away by lying to the angry, bad tempered teenagers saying he is allergic to dairy products. The next day, Greg explains that he removed the Cheese, but unfortunately for him, the other students thought that this meant Greg actually touched it, giving him the Cheese Touch. For the rest of the year, Greg is in seclusion from everyone else. He and Rowley become best friends again. Despite Greg's best efforts to become "class clown" in the favorites page in the yearbook, the title is given to Rowley for his "Zoo-Wee Mama" comics. Greg states at the end of the book that he threw away his yearbook and doesn't care about Rowley having the title of Class Clown, but if it goes to Rowley's head, Greg will remind him that he was the one who ate the Cheese and isn't afraid to tell the entire school about it.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (Book 2)

Plot

At the beginning, Greg explains how bad his summer was with his brother Rodrick, who knows a secret that Greg is trying to keep. When Greg returns to school, he finds out he still has the Cheese Touch, but he gets away with passing it on to a new kid, called Jeremy Pindle.

Later, it is clear that Greg and Rodrick are always broke, so their mother starts a "Mom Bucks" program. Rodrick throws a huge party while his parents aren't home and trashes the house, forcing Greg to clean it up with him.

Half a month later, Greg notices Rowley has play money identical to that of "Mom Bucks" and takes it home to put under his mattress. When Greg fails to do his homework, he must borrow an assignment from Rodrick and pay him $20,000 in Mom Bucks. Unfortunately, their mother found out about the stolen Mom Bucks when Rodrick tries to cash in the lot and she confiscates all of it.

In December, Rodrick's party is uncovered and he is grounded for a month. Greg is also grounded from video games for being Rodrick's "accomplice" even though he had been locked in the basement the whole time and had nothing to do with the party.

Rodrick then starts preparing for the talent show, despite his punishment (he wasn't allowed to leave the house). Frank then ends his punishment two weeks early because he hated listening to Rodrick's band, Löded Diper, play every day. After Greg hurts Rowley by putting a dumbbell in a pillow that Rowley kicks, Greg must perform in the talent show with a first-grader who Rowley was partners with. They don't make it in, but Rodrick's band does. During the talent show, Rodrick has his band's performance taped so he can send it to the record companies, but afterwards the video is rendered useless after it is found that their mother (who was taping the video) had talked the whole time and everything she said was heard on the tape.

Greg and Rodrick fight and then Greg's secret is spilled to the entire school. However, Greg ends up getting popular for what he did because the story gets extremely twisted from going to the girl's bathroom in a retirement home to invading the girls' locker room in Crossland High School. Greg helps Rodrick with his science project at the end, just because he is his brother.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (Book 3)

Plot

As a continuation of the second book, this novel rounds out the second semester of Greg's seventh grade school year.

The book starts with Greg's New Year's Day. The follow-up is Greg's Christmas, which is similar to Christmas in the first book; Greg gets nothing he likes from anyone. Uncle Charlie gives Greg a "laundry hoop" and Greg's mother, inspired, starts making Greg do his own laundry. Due to Greg's laziness, he does not do his laundry and does not plan to either. This plays a huge role later in the story.

Mentioned early in the story, Greg's father is becoming fed up with Greg's "wimpy" ways. Also, the "baddest teenager on our street", Lenwood Heath gets shipped out to military school, sparking an idea in Frank's head that plays a huge role in the story. Later, the Heffleys see Lenwood at a ticket booth with a crew cut, proper and incredibly polite. This causes Frank to decide to enroll Greg into military school, Spag Union, which takes place during Greg's summer vacation. Greg tries in vain to change his father's mind, such as doing activities such as soccer and Boy Scouts. However, they do not work. Therefore, Greg tries to impress Holly again, but it does not work at all. Finally, he settles for the sad fact he has to settle for Spag Union. But his summer won't be bad if he took some memories with him.

One day, his dad finds Manny's old blanket, Tingy, and throws it away. Manny gets revenge when he uses his dad's Civil War battlefield as a play set. Then Manny walks up to Greg and says "Ploopy!" Greg doesn't know what it means, so he asks to his mom, but she's talking on the phone. She says, "What is a ploopy?!" which was the exact thing Greg wanted to know. Then Manny starts calling Greg "ploopy" to get whatever he wants.

On Easter Sunday, Greg gets in the car, accidentally sitting on Manny's chocolate Easter bunny. He gets out of the car with chocolate on the back of his pants. Then Mom says that they can't skip church when Rodrick takes off his pants and says "He can wear MY pants!" Mom gives Greg her Easter sweater to tie around his waist. In Easter church service, he looks at Manny, who is playing with the things Mom and Dad brought to entertain him, and then thinks about the day when Manny threw a fit at daycare when his mom cut his sandwich in half, not in quarters the way he likes it. Mom had to drive all the way there to make the extra slice. Then he whispers in Manny's ear, "Ploopy!" Manny starts crying and Mom can't calm him down, so they have to go home.

Also mentioned earlier in the story, the Heffley's neighbors, the Snellas, are having a half-birthday for their youngest child Seth. During the party, the adults in the neighborhood have to perform silly acts and Mr. Snella sends the videotapes to America's Funniest Families, a spoof of America's Funniest Home Videos, to win the $10,000 prize. It is revealed that Frank hates the performing and will do anything to get out of it. On the day of the party, Manny throws Seth's present into a tree because he knew that Greg would snatch it away. It was a blue knit blanket. When Greg goes and retrieves it, his pants fall down revealing Wonder Woman underwear which he wore because it's one of the only clean garments he has left. Frank, who happened to be next in line to perform gets away as Mr. Snella points his camera to an embarrassed Greg. He repays Greg the next morning by not sending him to military school, suggesting there are other ways that Greg can stay fit.

The story ends abruptly as Rowley and Greg are sitting on the curb and meet a girl named Trista. Greg thinks Trista is cute and imagines that she and himself are in Rowley's country club in swimsuits with Rowley serving them drinks. The book ends with Greg saying that it is corny to end with a happy ending, but he is out of paper and writes "The End" in big letters.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (Book 4)

Plot

The book opens describing Greg's worst summer ever beginning with Greg Heffley and Rowley Jefferson going to his father’s country club after school closes for the summer, but Greg is kicked out due to his complaining of the smallest of predicaments. The beach trip that he was looking forward to is canceled due to lack of money, so the Heffleys resort to going to the town pool, which Greg hates because of its hairy and rotund visitors.

Later, Greg and Rowley have a sleepover together, and watch a horror movie taken from Rodrick's room. After the movie, Greg and Rowley soon become paranoid on account of a muddy hand that might strangle them, which was in the movie. Unfortunately for Greg, his mother finds out about the movie after Greg's father told her when he found them sleeping in the bathroom, and starts a reading club in which he is the only participant after two days. The reading program, however, is put to a stop when Mr. Jefferson arrives with a huge $83 bill that Greg and Rowley spent on fruit smoothies at the country club, and he forces the greg and rowley to pay it off!$

Greg and Rowley decide to do a lawn care service to pay the debt, but Mr. Jefferson only makes them one flyer for their business, after he tells them they can't use his computer. Their first customer is Mrs. Canfield, who lives on Greg's grandmother's street. Unfortunately, the job does not go well, as the boys never used a lawn mower before, all the gas leaks out of the mower, and the instructions are in Spanish. When Greg tells Rowley he needs to do most of the work while Greg counts the money, that made Rowley angry and he quits. Greg mows Mrs. Canfield's lawn by himself, but she refuses to pay him because he didn't mow all of her lawn because of the dog poop on there.

Greg’s birthday soon arrives, but the gifts he receives are all gifts he hates, including a useless cellphone that only calls home and 911. This is because Greg's parents believe that he, like his older brother Rodrick, will just rise the bill up if he gets a regular cellphone. Greg gets money in every card he receives, but Susan, his mother, confiscates it to pay off Mr. Jefferson. Uncle Joe’s dog, Killer, eats much of Greg’s cake, thus "ruining" his birthday. The following day, he and Rodrick both get fish as a makeup gift, even though it wasn't Rodrick's birthday, which Greg dubbed as "unfair". However, when the family takes a trip to a water park, Rodrick's fish eats Greg's fish after Susan puts Rodrick's fish in the same bowl because Rodrick didn't feed the fish or clean the bowl once and was starting to feed off the algae growing on it.

The next day is Father's Day, so the Heffleys visit Leisure Towers to spend the day with Greg's grandfather. There, Frank tells of how his dog, Nutty, ran away to a butterfly farm. Greg's grandfather reveals that he had actually run the dog over and Greg's father takes off in disgust. He then buys a dog which Susan names "Sweetheart" and shortens to "Sweetie", even though the dog is actually male. Even though Greg has wanted a dog for a long time, he quickly becomes annoyed at Sweetie, who naps on his pillow, sleeps on his bed, and "won't stop barking" at the TV, and the only way that gets him to stop barking is when a commercial with gophers popping out of their holes.

Greg's mother keeps making Greg go to the town pool with her and Manny, which Greg agrees to only to hang out with Heather Hills, who is a lifeguard there. Greg tries to make a good impression to her, even though she barely pays any attention to him. One day, Greg decides to end the so-called "relationship" when he makes her clean a kid's vomit and was too sick to clean it himself after he had to save Manny from the naked shower people.

The Jeffersons later invite Greg to go to the beach with them, which is where Greg had wanted to go, but he realizes it was far from what he expected, where he begins to have a breakdown from no electronics, almost got jumped by teenagers he pulled a prank on, and especially the Cranium Shaker, which almost makes Greg vomit. He tries to entertain himself, but he is sent home after he snaps a rubber band at Rowley.

Susan later tries to get Frank and Greg together, but both of them realize that they should keep their distance. She even got them tickets for a baseball game, but Greg thought Frank was trying to get rid of him for the incident that happened earlier, and calls the police on him, only embarrassed to discover the truth. To get out of it, they had to give the two cops their tickets. However, they both hate much of the same things, such as a comic named Li’l Cutie, where the writer has retired and passed it on to his son (who was possibly the basis of the character when he was little) and has made the comic even worse. Later, Sweetie is given to Greg's grandmother for company after her old dog Henry died.

The book ends with Greg realizing that summer is over when he sees a photo album titled "Best Summer Ever!" It is a "horrible record" of that summer to Greg, but Greg writes that the person who had taken the pictures had told the story.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth (Book 5)

Possible Plot (On Sale November 9, 2010)

In the final adventure in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Greg finds himself in his last year of middle school, where he is beginning to go through puberty.[2]

The series also includes the "Do It Yourself Book" and the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid Movie Diary."