Teaching staff and parents across the country will know children who are hooked on the ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ books. In fact, you may well have one yourself, and after they have read and reread all eleven titles in the series, they may need some help to find their next reading obsession.
Ask any group of 10-year-olds which of them have read ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ and almost every hand in the room will go up, in fact many will have started reading them at a much younger age. The only trouble is that Jeff Kinney’s masterpieces are so easy to read and so hilarious that some children find it hard to get beyond them. And the last thing we want is for any child, is to stop reading for pleasure, so we need to find more fuel for their reading fire!
The trick is to ease them into a new series that they find as funny and pleasurable to read, whilst also hoping to develop style and vocabulary. A love of reading absolutely has to come ahead of worrying about the quality of a book.
Below are a few suggestions for directly comparable styles and readability, all of which have more than one title in the range to keep them going for a while AND all of which would handily make good stocking fillers for Christmas too!
Never fear, there are similar style books for the older or more confident child too, many of which we also have available to borrow from the school library, and again often have more than one book in the series.
Mrs Emmett, Librarian
