What to Read After Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Your child has finished every Diary of a Wimpy Kid book twice, and every other book you bring home stays shut on the nightstand. Search for books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and you get long alphabetical lists with no way to choose between them. The way through is to work out which part of Wimpy Kid your child locked onto, then match the next series to that one part.

Why a child locks onto one series and refuses the rest

A child who reads one series over and over is still a reader. The loop is a signal that something in those books fits, and the fit is specific. Your job is to name it before you buy anything.

Loyalty to a series is loyalty to a format as much as to a character. Greg Heffley is funny, and the page he lives on is doing work too: wide margins, short entries, a drawing every few paragraphs. Swap the page and the loyalty breaks, even when the jokes are similar.

What the child is loyal to

Format, voice, subject and pace are the four things a reader attaches to. A child who loves the drawings will bounce off a dense chapter book with the same plot. A child who loves the school politics will read three hundred pages about school politics with no pictures at all.

Abrams publishes the series under its Amulet Books imprint for ages 8 to 12, and book one came out on April 1, 2007. Twenty main books have followed since. Book 21, Fight or Flight, arrives on October 20, 2026.

For the ranking debate, our post on the best Diary of a Wimpy Kid books covers the titles families come back to, and why the series appeals to all ages explains why adults keep reading them too.

The four reasons kids love Wimpy Kid, and a match for each

Four things pull children into Wimpy Kid, and each one points at a different shelf. Ask your child which page they would reread if they could keep only one. The answer picks the next series.

Name the reason before you pick the title

Doodles are the first reason. A child who reads Wimpy Kid for the drawings wants pictures that carry the joke instead of decorating it. Lincoln Peirce's Big Nate novels and Liz Pichon's Tom Gates do that page after page.

The diary voice is the second reason. Greg talks to the reader, blames everyone else and learns nothing, and that first-person complaint is the engine of the whole series. Dork Diaries and Timmy Failure run on the same engine with a different narrator.

School humor is the third reason. Lunch tables, group projects, unfair teachers and a best friend who ruins things give Wimpy Kid most of its plots. The Terrible Two, Origami Yoda and Middle School live in the same building.

Pace is the fourth reason. Short entries and white space let a child finish ten pages in five minutes and feel fast doing it. Dog Man, The Bad Guys and Captain Underpants push that further than Wimpy Kid does.

Ten series, and the Wimpy Kid reader each one suits

Publisher age ranges below come from the publishers' own product pages, read in September 2026, and two of those publishers print no range at all. Format tells you more than age for this reader. An illustrated diary reads like Wimpy Kid; a graphic novel reads like a comic.

How to read the ages and the formats

Tom Gates comes with a warning for US families. Candlewick published five titles in the United States, and Penguin Random House labels the first one "Book 1 of 5", while the UK series runs far past twenty. Order a UK edition if your child wants to keep going.

Big Nate needs a second warning. The eight novels are illustrated prose; the forty-plus Andrews McMeel collections under the same name are full-color comic strips for ages 9 to 11. Both are good, and they are different reading experiences.

How to hand over the next series without a fight

Handing a child a new series works when it feels like an offer and fails when it feels like an assignment. Six steps make the swap stick.

The step most parents skip

Silence is the step most parents skip. A quiet week lets your child pick the book up on their own terms, and that sense of ownership is what makes the second book happen. Questions about progress turn a new series into a chore before chapter two.

1. Ask one question, not three. Say: what is the funniest page in any Wimpy Kid book? The answer tells you whether it was a drawing, a line of narration or a school disaster.
2. Borrow three books at once, from two formats. One illustrated diary, one graphic novel, one wildcard. A single test book turns into a verdict on reading itself.
3. Put them where the old books live. Leave them on the nightstand, in the car, next to the Wimpy Kid shelf. A new book on a new shelf reads as homework.
4. Say nothing for a week. No check-ins, no "did you start it yet". Curiosity dies the moment a book becomes a task with a deadline.
5. Read the first ten pages out loud. Voices help, and the first ten pages are where a new narrator either lands or does not. Stop at a cliffhanger and hand the book over.
6. Let the misses go without comment. Two out of three will fail, and that is the normal rate. Return them and try the next format.

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Our roundup of the funniest books to make kids laugh makes a useful backup pile for the week when all three picks miss.

Graphic novels count as real reading

Graphic novels carry the same awards as prose novels. The American Library Association gives the Newbery Medal to "the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published by an American publisher in the United States in English during the preceding year". In 2020 it went to New Kid by Jerry Craft, the first graphic novel ever to win it.

What to say when a relative calls them "not real books"

Panels do work that prose does not. A reader has to track time across the gutter between frames, infer the action nobody drew, and read faces for tone. Scholastic sells Dog Man as a graphic novel series and lists book one for ages 7 and up.

A child who moves from Wimpy Kid to Dog Man has not gone backwards. Fourteen Dog Man books and twenty Bad Guys episodes add up to a lot of finished reading, and finished reading builds the habit. Offer a longer book later, once the streak is running.

Mistakes that keep a Wimpy Kid reader stuck

Four habits keep families in the loop for months at a time. Each one has a cheap fix.

• Pushing "better" books. Handing over a prize-winning novel because it is worthier tells your child their taste is wrong. Match the format first and worry about literary merit in a year.
• Jumping the reading level. A child reading Wimpy Kid at ages 8 to 12 will not enjoy a 400-page fantasy because the word count looks impressive. Stay inside the same band and change the flavor instead.
• Taking the Wimpy Kid books away. Rereading is how fluency gets built, and removing the shelf removes the one thing that is working. Leave the whole set where it is and add to it.
• Buying one book as a test. One book turns a browsing session into a pass-or-fail exam. Three books from two formats turns it back into a choice.

The edge case: a strong reader who wants easy books

Some children read well above grade level and still want cartoons. Nothing is wrong there, and the reason is usually load: a hard school day leaves no room for a hard book. Keep the easy series flowing and add one harder read-aloud that you carry yourself.

For readers who want strange and structural over school-based, our list of series like Wayside School goes somewhere different, and the shows and films Wimpy Kid fans enjoy scratch the same itch away from the page.

Your next-series checklist

• Name the reason. Doodles, voice, school humor or pace. Write it down before you open a catalog.
• Pick two formats. One illustrated diary and one graphic novel covers most Wimpy Kid readers.
• Check the publisher's page. Abrams, Scholastic, Candlewick and Hachette print the age range on each title's product page.
• Get three, and borrow them. Library holds cost nothing and let you fail cheaply.
• Leave the old shelf alone. Rereading Wimpy Kid alongside the new series is a good sign.

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