#Diarly of wimpy kid series
#Diarly of wimpy kid free

Greg is the smart-mouthed sad-sack protagonist of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series ( read an excerpt). For now, one particularly meek kid named Greg Heffley is burning up children's book best-seller lists. The Bible says that the meek might one day inherit the earth. Jeff Kinney's newest book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days is the largest book release so far this year, with 4 million copies in the first printing. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor.

Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. She also works in the Children's Department at a Barnes and Noble bookstore on San Diego, California.Ĭopyright © 2009 NPR. NORRIS: Tanya Turek blogs about children's books at, and for there is numeral four. NORRIS: Tanya Turek, it's been good to talk to you. I don't think there's any reason to take a book out of a kid's hand if you, as the parent, are going to be involved and be the moral voice outside of the text. But I, you know, I just - above all else, I think this is a really great opportunity for parents to talk to their kids about what they're reading and figure it out that way. Yeah, you know, I go back and forth about this because I feel like on a certain level, the humor in the book is really adult and it is akin to, you know, maybe the humor in 'The Office' or 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' where someone's being a horrible person and everybody else is in on the joke, and you wonder if the kids reading the book are in on the joke. I know when I read these books with my kids, I find myself laughing, laughing really hard and then pulling back and saying, ooh, do I want my kids to be laughing at that? Is that a good thing? They think that they introduce kids to life lessons that they probably don't need in the pages of a book. NORRIS: And parents, if you look at the blogosphere, a lot of parents are really ambivalent about this. NORRIS: You know what, maybe you can help us understand the tension because on one hand, librarians have really come to appreciate these books, some reluctantly because they work so well with reluctant readers. NORRIS: So why are parents so suspicious of these books? Why are they worried? You know, they can do a reality check with their kids after they read the book and say, hey, you know, what do you think about the cheese touch and what - how Greg treated Rowley, you know, or something like that. But I think for younger readers, maybe the parents can be the moral voice outside of the text. I don't think his literature has to have morally outstanding characters in it.

#Diarly of wimpy kid free

You know, I think what I would like to see - you know, Kinney makes the point of saying that his books are less than free and that they're all about the humor, and I think that's great.

And, you know, I really admire how Kinney captures that so astutely. NORRIS: …wrote in about, which really is about, you know, kids being ostracized for… NORRIS: …like the cheese touch, which a lot of the kids… I mean, like a lot of the scenes really do spring from real life… NORRIS: Well, you note that the book is not just fantastical. But, you know, we maybe did it once or twice, whereas in these books, Greg is doing it almost every day. And, you know, I think, really, he's a - like a condensed hyper-version of what kids are like at this age because I think the reason adults laugh at it is because we all remember doing something horrible to one of our friends as a kid or lying to an adult or something like that. He's just lazy and self-interested and doesn't think about anybody else. TANYA TUREK (Blogger, ): Oh, if he was my son, I don't know what I'd do. She's a children's book blogger and mother of three, and she has a more exacting view of Jeff Kinney's character, Greg Heffley.