Diary of a Wimpy Writer

Wow, this book is entirely patheitcally stupid and not appropriate for childern.

i read the books and found them a light hearted and pretty appropritately funny book. although i do like to read more books that teach life messages, and encourage younger kids 2 do the same, we all need a little humor in our lives. i found the book very funny and because its not meant 2 b a very deep book, i didnt really dwell on the boys slightly immoral actions. i just found the book funny, and i think most people will 2. although this book doesnt teach important life lessons, its funny and cute and it takes talent to make, and appropritae humorous literature is getting harder and harder to find. i really dont find this a bad read

Thank You! My son is in 2nd grade and I did start him reading Harry Potter which he LOVES. I got fed up with him reading mindless non-sense like the Captain Underpants series that he was very much into. I read to him every night and we are now on Book 3 of Harry Potter. We take turns reading as some of the words are challenging for him, but it makes me sick when I hear of books like Diary of a Wimpy Writer. We are growing a nation of lazy, mediocre kids who look for the easy way out. As a chiropractor who focuses on WELLNESS - I tell patients, yes, it's easy to take a drug or a pill, but is that where true health comes from? What kind of message do we send our kids when we pop a pill for every little ache and pain? We have a nation of kids becoming zombies on Ritalin, Adderall and Prozac. Scary.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your article and I thank you for expressing your thoughts so eloquently. I think however, that we need not discourage our children from reading this series of books. Perhaps a parent and child can each read his/her own copy and come together to discuss the actions of the main character. With that said, I am certainly NOT applauding/endorsing the actions of this young boy. It's just that I feel it is important for our children to be exposed to a wide variety of literature, even if it goes against our family values. BTW--I too have my MSW degree and work in the field of special education. My son has Aspergers Syndrome/High Functioning Autism, and I'm proud to say that he did beautifully at his Bar Mitzvah 5 1/2 years ago.

Very enlightening - I had no idea these books were about a wimpy kid who has such a mean devious mind. It's a truly a shame that children, parents, teachers and libraries are reading these books and not other more wholesome "classic" books. Even the Harry Potter books are better with their good and bad plot lines, etc. Your article mirrors my sentiments exactly, especially the importance of parents knowing and monitoring what their children are reading, doing on the internet, etc. etc.

I read charlie and the chocolate factory and found them very good to teach children that when you act well behaved, you accomplish more

Chait has a series of comic-type books full of adventure, stunning pictures, a strong moral message with lots of humor. These books as well as Chaim Walder's Kids Speak series which someone referred to are published by Feldheim Publishers.

I don't think I should be judging people I only want to break this down into 2 parts. Described the negative which I now have to deal with and turn it around and explain to my son the positve message in a loving way. This behavior is not exceptable to Hashem and by extension not exceptable to me and I am proud that you understand the difference (both parts positive and negative). Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Tommy Stern

I read out loud to my daughter. Books that had fascinated me when I was young. What Katy Did, What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next....all three focus on a girl who learned to put bad temper behind her and find the good, to overcome an accident which temporarily made her lame. Any books that can lead a child to emulate a hero or to aspire to living a life of integrity, kindness and compassion are worth the trouble it takes to turn the child on to them. At least when my child was old enough to choose to watch less than savoury videos, she has her early literary lessons as a reference point and understands that achievement sometimes takes hard work. As parents we are guardians of standards. If we let them slip, our kids can only carry through with the highest level that we could teach. We need to set benchmarks higher not lower, or one day we'll all be so low we could play handball against a kurb!

Books really influence personality and behaviour. My kids liked Haim Valder's books- where he took real stories that kids wrote to him and he deals very nicely with problems kids deal with everyday- in a very attractive way. The books are so interesting that my kids are waiting for every new book that is comming out. It comes in many laguages.

Writer #29 writes, "I think it is wrong to not approve this book" Is that where we've come to? That is wrong to not approve a book filled with negative morals? As an adult who read a whole Wimpy Kid book, I can tell you, there is no silver lining, no redeeming good message at the end of the book. Of course we should voice our disapproval of this book! The more everyone sits by quietly, the more this genre of books will proliferate. On TV we have already sunk to the level where we make shows like "Desperate Housewives" glorifying adultery, or "the Family Guy" glorifying everything that you would not want in your family. Let's hope that we can keep this out of children's literature.

While I agree with the general gist of the article, I think the comments on author Jeff Kinney are unnecessarily harsh. It's not so simple to just "try harder" and create a totally new set of characters. I know this might sound pretentious, but when I tell stories I feel that my characters are discovered, not created, and I can't just force them to be one way or another. If a diabolical and cruel child pops into an author's head, it's not so simple to exchange him for a sweet, loving kid. Whether or not an author should publish books with highly negative content is an interesting moral question. But in any case, I don't think it's right to assume that negative books are the result of lazy writing.

I THINK DIARY OF A WIMPY KID IS FUNNY AND YOU OPENED TO ONE PART THAT IS BAD SO WHAT.THAT IS THE POINT OF THE BOOK,TO SHOW ABOUT A WIMPY KIDS LIFE WITH TWO HARD BROTHERS THAT DO NOT APPRECIATE HIM.ABOUT CHIRAG I THINK IT IS WRONG BUT IT IS A STORY HE CAN WRITE WHATEVER JEFF KINNEY WANTS TO WRITE.SO DO NOT APPROVE THIS BOOK .I JUST THINK IT IS WRONG TO NOT APPROVE THIS BOOK.

I am a mother of a 9 year old who hates reading but needs help in that department so as not to fall behind. I am constantly looking for books for him to read. I am so glad you put this up.I have been looking at the wimpy books and was definitely thinking of buying them, but now I will refrain. He generally gravitates towards books with pictures or comics (which help him since the words are contained in little boxes instead of in long pages which he gets overwhelmed with.) I definitely think parents should take a proactive role in filtering what enters their children's "moral compass". However, that is not to say I have been a perfect example of that myself. (My son gobbled up Captain Underpants and is an avid Calvin and Hobbes reader.. which he understands to be about a very "mischeivous naughty" boy with a "big" imagination.) But I am certainly trying to find books that don't encourage or at the very lease turn a blind eye, to just simple bad-middos behavior. Since my son is also a sports fanatic I've been very lucky to find an array of baseball oriented novels, or sports biographies which he is now gobbling up. As much as people may claim "the critisicm here is just overreacting" I believe that we do not need to allow our children exposure to everything even things that seem "rated G/PG" or geared for kids. Sometimes I find myself telling my husband.. "this child's neshomo is still untainted, why not allow it as many years of purity as possible before the world/yeitzar hara will try to taint it?". Kol Hakavod.

Excuse me but- what kind of mess is this??. This is terrible- why are people encouraging the reading of this book?. What kind of example are we sending our children?. There is an old saying- birds of a feather flock together- maybe the people who loved this book feel the same way- that it is okay to lie, steal, be mean, and cheat to get what you want. This is the problem in our society- make excuses, call your self a victim, cop out, and so forth- now we complain about people who are like this, but we think a book like this is okay to read to children(who do become adults) by the way, and copy these behaviors. At least one of the commentors read the books with her kids- as parents, we have to pay atention to what is being pushed to our kids- look at everything, because there is a sneaky socialist agenda involved here. Years ago, we didn't have this problem like we do now. I was particularly outraged about the lawn mowing passage- when I was a kid,my parents told me , if you didn't do a good job, you had to go back and do it again- they didn't let you escape- it was called integrity and responsibility-HELLO- let's go back to the old standards we used to have in this country- PLEASE!

I am a little concerned about the "*8 books parents should read and kids should devour" assortment featured at the end of the article, especially since the article itself was so compelling in its insistence that parents should be well-aquainted with the books their children are reading. As a former (yeshiva) English teacher, along with being masters prepared, and a mother of 6, I and/or my children have read many of the books featured, and I don't agree that all are entirely appropriate. Unfortunately, a Caldecott or Newberry Award-winning book is no longer a shoo-in for kashrus. Both parents and schools must be astute in choosing the right literature, whether secular or Jewish, that meets all their standards.

I haven't any contact with these wimpy kid books but it does seem your readership here finds them funny. So maybe there's something "more" you are not catching that children and adults find hilarious about these obvious misadventures that don't sound funny at all as you tell it. I do know one thing and that is, children cannot write their names any longer. I was at the post office yesterday and had to wait in line while a teenager, around seventeen, practiced writing her name in cursive, because it was necessary to mail her package. She just, didn't, know how. People in line said it's not really taught in school any more.

I'm 20 and I read all the books and I LOVED them. They are actually laugh out loud hilarious. BUT (and this is a big but) just because something is funny doesn't mean it's appropriate/good for you. (i.e. TV shows that don't even have to be named). Being a person who appreciates humor (well I guess most people would define themselves that way), it's really hard to find funny literature in the Jewish world. I don't watch movies or TV or even read adult novels and therefore I restrict myself to children books. When I found Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I thought I struck gold. But it was fools gold because as the author of this article explained, the lessons taught in this book are twisted and immoral. I guess when it comes down to it, the conflict is - it's entertaining, does that mean I have to read it?

The author is really overreacting!It's just a kid's book. Maybe some adult books aren't particularly moral either.The books do show that cheaters never prosper.No kid would enjoy the book if it wasn't funny.Greg does do good sometimes.

I raised 6 kids.when confronted with controversial reading both fiction and non, i used it as a teaching opportunity. They were allowed to read them, but only if we read them together, that way we could discuss what made them react as they did, how did it effect others, what alternatives were available, what was the possible long term results,how did it agree/disagree with what we hold as truth....I knew all their lives they would be exposed to alternate views and needed to be trained to think for themselves,not just follow the crowd.

Both of my childrren have read these books. I was intrigued; so, I read it with them at night. We were laughing at the unrealistic adventures. Instead of learning bad behaviors, I have used the series to be a spring board for a positive dialogue with my kids. We have talked about what they would do in some of the scenes. Rabbi Burnham is right that we, as parents , need to know about what our children read. This is a funny seriies that I would recommend to kids. It's OK to laugh as you read this with your kids!

I totally agree with Anonymous' comments, entitled "Missing the Point."

Well said! Thank you for letting parents know. I have looked at those books but never purchased and I'm glad. We just finished The Mysterious Benedict Society and it was wonderful. My eight year old and I both enjoyed it. We took turns reading because it is over 500 pages but worth the read.

echinuch.org is a website that mostly provides teaching materials for teachers. It has a "censored" book list that clearly grades hundreds of books and includes comments describing possible concerns or issues with each book. Search for recommended book list.

Im 12. I have read Diary OF A Wimpy Kid, and I have found it disgusting. The article dosen't mention he beats up his 'slow' friend and abuses his friends trust. If thats what my generations reading, no wonder. No wonder.

A perfect example of UNDESERVED SELF-IMPORTANCE. This is just the opposite of heroes and examples of uplifting moral struggle and courage. Children will unfortunately learn the dark side of human nature but with books such as these they will only know the inhumanity of humanity. The contrast between good and evil will be blurred and their young lives will never know the difference.

I agree with Rabbi Burnham's critique. I'd also like to offer more great books (these are about 4th grade reading level)-- books by Andrew Clements (Frindle, The School Story, The Jacket, The Report Card, The Landry News, etc etc etc)-- they have them in libraries and Barnes and Noble.

I agree with #2 the Giver is a creepy book about a controlled 'utopian' society that euthanizes the sick and elderly. I like Lois Lowry's "Number the Stars" an excellent introductory book about the Holocaust from the perspective of a non-Jewish Danish girl who helps rescue her Jewish friend and her family. I laughed initially when reading Junie B. Jones, but after a couple of books she started sounding just plain bratty--and maybe a bit OCD-ish in her fearful, repetitive behaviors. In my opinion, nothing beats Ramona the Pest and Beverly Cleary's other books for young readers (pre-adolescent--I don't vouch for her books for tweens and teens).

Thank you for writing this. I made the mistake of not reading this through before my son read it. Once I did read it, I was very unhappy about the overall impression. He will not be reading them anymore!

The best books are usually ASSIGNED to kids as REQUIRED READING, which leaves even fewer books for kids to read in spare time. Please post more titles.

Everyone who has children should read "The Children's Story" by James Clavell. It's a very short story, a 15 minute read and it's for adults. Decide if if your children or grandchildren are mature enough to read and understand it and then discuss it together. It scared the beejeebers out of me with it's implications. It's also available in Paperback on Amazon. On Leave it to Beaver the TV show, most of us kids knew that Eddie Haskell was a jerk. It interested us to watch and see what he did and how it turned out. We never emulated him. Children surely have the same logic and reasoning about Greg in the Wimpy Writer. Your children probably have a Greg or two in their school. Maybe the book helps identify kids of his type and put them out in the open.. I read "Little Women" and "Johnny Tremain" around 10 to 13 years old. My kids read The Boxcar Children and Science Fiction.. My kids read The Boxcar Children" and others in grade school. I read them too and found them exciting and fun.

As the mother of an almost 13 yr old girl who is an avid bookworm,it's becoming more difficult to navigate what books would be appropriate -secular books are becoming more and more inappropriate and a lot of Jewish books are not up to snuff in terms of quality.I know there are good Jewish books-but one also needs to have deep pockets to afford them. Please- if there are frum,Jewish parents that through the auspices of Aish.com could help us out and put together a larger list of good books(maybe even lilke Oprah's Book Club)us parents would be ever so grateful, I do try when my daughter takes books out ,to weed out the bad from the good,but I'm sure that even the ones that I think are OK probably slip in not so kosher messages.Aish would be doing a tremendous service! Thank you!

Before I retired I trained teachers of English as a second language at a university in Canada. When using stories in the classroom, teachers need to appraise what the stories might do to their readers. The critic Wayne C. Booth tells how to do this in his book, "The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction," U of California Press, 1988. Also, readers do engage with stories so that they acquire experience vicariously and they can learn how to integrate that experience into their own self-story. Nossrat Peseschkian describes the various processes individuals can use to do this in "Oriental Stories as Tools in Psychotherapy: The Merchant and the Parrot," Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1986. In this book Peseschkian shows how a story may function in any one (or more) of seven different ways: 1, as a mirror; 2, as a model; 3, as a mediator; 4, as a repository of experiences; 5, as a transmitter of tradition; 6, as a transmitter of another culture; or 7, as a counter-concept. The same story can serve different functions for different individuals. While I refused to use what I considered "bad" books (like the ones described in your article here, Rabbi) in my classroom, if they are used in someone's child's classroom, I suggest parents reread it with the child and help the child reflect on why the protagonist's behavior is bad and how the child could avoid becoming bad in that way (counter-concept function). When a story enters a person's mind, it remains there, consciously or unconsciously. I have yet to find an educator who can tell me how to "take out" something that has entered the mind via the reading process. You can vomit up bad food, but there is no way of vomiting up a story or an idea once it is taken into the self. Your article in quite excellent!

I saw this on Amazon with ratings through the roof, and purchased one. I read the WHOLE book. I'm very glad I previewed it before giving it to my kids. I would never voluntarily give this to them. There's no happy ending. Everyone he screws stays screwed, he learns no lesson, and he's confortable with his life. Not the lesson I want my kids to learn. I actually kept Calvin and Hobbes from my kids until they were about 12 or 13 or so, because I felt that the way he treated his parents and lack of ethic were not what I wanted my kids emulating or thinking is acceptable or funny behavior. The Zits cartoon I also kept from them until they were about 16 and their behavior had settled and they could comfortably look at it and laugh or identify with the emotions.

We listened to this book on CD in my elementary school carpool and no one came late -- they wanted to hear more!

i always knew i didn't like those books but couldn't figure out why. my little sister reads and loves them but i found them to be very negative. Aside from the kid's lack of morals, he's beaten down, his parents are incompetent, and his life is miserable. thanks for the article, i'll definitely share it. also- the giver is a good book but for older children and while junie b jones is cute and playful, the books are grammatically incorrect and don't teach good writing or speaking skills.

i read the entire book, and i completely agree with Rabbi Burnham. the child doesn't seem to learn any lessons in the end, and he has no respect for his parents. he makes fun on his parents and sneaks things behind their backs without thinking twice, and in the book this is made out as ok. also, it is not like Dr. Suess in that Dr. Suess's world is entirely imaginative, while the "diary of a wimpy kid" books are very realistic. this book is teaching children to have no morals, and that life revovls around you.

yes, the kid does "bad"things...but then the parents correct him, and the ending of the book shows understanding of how the world works..if you only read portions of the book. you missed the point. I think this book really helps children feel understood and help them learn that life doesn't work llike their "fantasy'" and that Moms and Dads have to teach their chilldren right from wrong. it's as if you read half a novel and decided the whole from that piece, which isn't "right" either. I work in the psychological field and I loved the book....just allows wishes and dreams to be expressed: no different than other fairy tales which have morals of the story. Maybe looking from a child's perspective: wimpy kid is acting out what kids are thinking, and it's a safe outlet for kids to express themselves...and it's a book, like Dr Suess..you wouldn't really walk down the street with your eyes closed, would you?

Looking at this, and looking at what plays on the Cartoon Chanel for hours at a time, it is a wonder we do not have more Colembines. Seems to me, America really admires the Maddoff, Enron types and is teaching the children how to do the same. We as parents have to be vigilant in what our children are reading and watching. We have to learn to say no to bad lessons and show the children the good lessons.

I would not include The Giver book. It is weird and gave me nightmares

I find the Junie B Jones series to be very funny and very real. She is a girl who is definitely not perfect, and who kids can relate to. However, the books do always have a good moral message and proper principals underneath!