Hard Luck
2013
- humorous stories
- fortune
- diaries
- middle schools
- accelerated readers (bur)
- juvenile fiction
- fiction
- schools
- friendship
- luck
The story
Greg Heffley and his family and friends are back in Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 8, the latest installment in the #1 bestselling series by Jeff Kinney and one of the most anticipated books of 2013. A global phenomenon, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has more than 85 million books in print around the world. Greg Heffley's on a losing streak. His best friend, Rowley Jefferson, has ditched him, and finding new friends in middle school is proving to be a tough task. To change his fortunes, Greg decides to take a leap of faith and turn his decisions over to chance. Will a roll of the dice turn things around, or is Greg's life destined to be just another hard-luck story?
What it’s like
Quick, breezy and bright on the page: this is a Diary of a Wimpy Kid entry, so expect loose, hand-lettered-feeling spreads of Jeff Kinney's stick-figure cartoons, sparse captions, and short diary entries that read like a kid's slightly unreliable confessions. The voice is dry, deadpan and self-pitying, with a steady drumbeat of small humiliations in cafeteria, classroom and home settings that are rendered with plain, ordinary detail: crumpled notebook pages, lunch trays, a bedroom doorway, a crowded hallway. Pacing is quick and episodic, with each gag landing and moving on, so it suits a lazy afternoon, a long-haul flight, or reading in one sitting before bed. Emotionally it stays light and wry, with a warm undertow about friendship drifting apart and the fragile hope of starting over. There is nothing violent, sexual or frightening; the only sting is embarrassment and social awkwardness. Good for middle-grade readers, reluctant readers, and anyone wanting a gentle, funny comfort read with no heaviness.
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