Diary of a Wimpy Kid Books in Order

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is Jeff Kinney's illustrated diary of Greg Heffley - a middle-school schemer with an inflated sense of his own genius - and it is one of the bestselling children's series ever published: twenty main books since 2007, a guaranteed autumn release every single year, and a readership that hands the books down sibling to sibling. The formula never moves: Greg gets an idea (money, fame, avoiding effort), the idea collides with reality, and the jokes are carried by Kinney's deadpan line drawings. Parents ask two questions about it - how many are there, and does the order matter (2007–present).

Where to start

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2007), the first - and the honest answer is it barely matters, because the books are episodic: each is one school year or one vacation, the characters reset rather than age, and a nine-year-old who opens book 14 loses almost nothing. Start with book one because it is the funniest and the reference point (the cheese touch, Rowley, Rodrick's band), but any book a kid is excited about is the right book. The one genuine prerequisite in the series is Rodrick Rules - the brothers' relationship is the emotional core, and it starts there.

Does the reading order matter?

Publication order, one book per October since 2007, and the lightest ordering rules of any series on this site: no continuing plotlines, no spoilers to avoid, characters who neither age nor graduate. The running gags (the cheese touch, Fregley, Manny's logic) reward reading in order only gently. Two notes for completists: the numbering runs straight 1-21 with no book skipped in any market, and the three movie adaptations cover books 1-3 (plus The Long Haul, book 9) - the films are loose enough that watching first spoils nothing.

Which one is the best?

The 2007 original is the classic and still the funniest sustained run. Rodrick Rules (2008) is the fan favorite and the one with the most heart. Among recent volumes, The Getaway (2017) and The Meltdown (2018) are the modern fan picks, and Partypooper (2025) gave the series its first genuinely divisive reaction - fans either call it a return to form or the weirdest one yet.

Related guides

Readers finishing this shelf usually want the map next door: Dog Man books in order, Wings of Fire books in order, Percy Jackson books in order. Every guide follows the same format — the shelf, the entry point, the honest answer about order.

Make it a project

Pick a session size and let the days accumulate — at the pace our reading speed test measures, most shelves above clear in a few weeks of half-hours. Every guide on the books in order shelf follows this same format, and when a book lands, its 8-question quiz is waiting on the original book quiz.