Books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Nate Wright is convinced he is destined for greatness. His grades, his teachers, and his disciplinary record all suggest otherwise. Lincoln Peirce mixes prose chapters with comic-strip panels to create something that reads like a more visual version of Wimpy Kid.

Nate is a slightly more likable version of Greg Heffley. He has the same overinflated self-image, the same talent for getting into trouble, and the same complete inability to recognize his own role in his problems. But Nate has a creative streak and a stubbornness that makes you root for him even when he is driving his teacher Mrs.

Godfrey insane. The comic strip format means the jokes come faster and more visually. If your kid burned through Wimpy Kid and needs another series with the same energy, Big Nate is the most natural next step.

Nikki Maxwell starts at a new school and documents every social disaster, mean girl encounter, and crush-related panic in her diary, complete with doodles. Rachel Renee Russell took the Wimpy Kid formula and gave it to a female protagonist, and it works brilliantly. Nikki has Greg's flair for drama and his tendency to make situations worse while trying to fix them.

The illustrations are more detailed than Kinney's stick figures, which gives the books a different visual personality. The social dynamics lean more toward friendship drama and crushes than Greg's general chaos, but the humor comes from the same place. A kid who takes everything way too seriously while completely missing the bigger picture.

This series has sold over 45 million copies for good reason.

Tom Gates uses doodles, stories, and creative stalling tactics to get through school while annoying his sister and avoiding his teacher Mr. Fullerman. Liz Pichon created the UK answer to Wimpy Kid, and Tom is a worthy counterpart to Greg Heffley.

The illustrations are more elaborate and central to the storytelling, with every page covered in drawings, notes, and visual gags. Tom is a sweeter character than Greg. He is creative, easily distracted, and genuinely loves his friends and family, even when they drive him crazy.

The humor is lighter and warmer. If your reader loved Wimpy Kid but you want something with less cynicism and more creativity, Tom Gates hits the perfect balance. The series has won multiple awards in the UK and deserves to be bigger internationally.

George and Harold are best friends, troublemakers, and comic book creators who accidentally hypnotize their mean principal into becoming Captain Underpants, a superhero who fights crime in his underwear. Dav Pilkey leans harder into absurdist humor than Kinney does, mixing prose chapters with Flip-O-Rama pages and George and Harold's hand-drawn comics. The irreverence is the point.

Captain Underpants celebrates the kind of humor that kids love and adults pretend to be above. Potty jokes, silly names, teachers getting humiliated. Pilkey makes it all work by wrapping it in a genuine friendship between two creative kids who make each other laugh.

Like Wimpy Kid, these books turned millions of reluctant readers into enthusiastic ones. The format is intentionally accessible, designed to meet kids where they are rather than where adults think they should be.

Timmy Failure runs Total Failure Inc., a detective agency operated out of his bedroom with his partner, a 1,500-pound polar bear named Total. His cases never go well. His confidence never wavers.

Stephan Pastis, the creator of the Pearls Before Swine comic strip, brought his deadpan humor to middle-grade fiction and created one of the funniest kid narrators since Greg Heffley. Timmy is spectacularly oblivious. He genuinely believes he is the greatest detective in the world while consistently missing every obvious clue. The gap between Timmy's self-assessment and reality is enormous, and Pastis mines it perfectly.

The illustrations add visual punchlines to almost every page. Like Wimpy Kid, the humor comes from a narrator who cannot see himself clearly, but Timmy's detective delusions give the comedy a different flavor.

Rafe Khatchadorian starts sixth grade by attempting to break every single rule in the school code of conduct. Each rule violation earns points in a game he is playing against his imaginary friend Leo. James Patterson and co-writer Chris Tebbetts created a series that hits the same marks as Wimpy Kid but with a more rebellious protagonist and slightly higher emotional stakes.

Rafe comes from a tougher background than Greg Heffley, with a difficult home life that gives his rule-breaking a deeper motivation. The illustrations by Laura Park add energy and humor throughout. Patterson knows how to pace a story, and the chapters are short and punchy in a way that keeps pages turning.

For kids who loved Wimpy Kid's school humor but are ready for a protagonist with a bit more edge, Rafe is a great next step.

Jeff Kinney flipped the script by telling the Wimpy Kid story from Rowley Jefferson's perspective. Rowley is Greg's best friend, loyal to a fault, genuinely nice, and completely unaware that Greg takes advantage of him constantly. Seeing the Wimpy Kid world through Rowley's eyes is revelatory.

Events that Greg presented as reasonable look very different when Rowley describes them with his cheerful, trusting narration. Kinney uses the perspective shift to add comedy and unexpected depth to the friendship. Rowley's drawings are deliberately simpler and more innocent than Greg's, which adds another layer of visual humor.

This is the perfect companion to Wimpy Kid for readers who have exhausted the main series. It rewards familiarity with the original books while working as a standalone. Plus, Rowley is genuinely easier to root for than Greg.

Tom Angleberger's The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is the book I hand to Wimpy Kid kids who already finished the series and want something with the same goofy classroom voice. Tommy is collecting case files from his sixth-grade classmates about Dwight, the weirdest kid in school, and his finger puppet Origami Yoda, which keeps giving advice that turns out to be uncannily right.

Each chapter is a different kid's story, complete with margin doodles by Kellen and skeptical commentary from Harvey, so the book reads like a passed-around school notebook in the best way. Angleberger nails the sixth-grade social hierarchy without dumbing it down, and the case-file structure rewards readers who pay attention.

I love how Dwight stays an oddball through every page. Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans who want a series that takes the cartoon-and-prose format somewhere genuinely strange.

Mac Barnett and Jory John's The Terrible Two is what you get when two of the funniest picture-book writers working today decide to write an illustrated chapter book for the Wimpy Kid shelf. Miles Murphy is the best prankster at his old school, and he is furious to discover, after his family moves to dairy-cow town Yawnee Valley, that someone at his new school is even better.

The setup is classic, but Barnett and John write the kind of jokes that make adults laugh too, and Kevin Cornell's pen-and-ink illustrations land between every chapter to extend the gags. I think the prank-war structure works better than a pure diary because each escalation gives the book a new reason to keep going.

Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans who want a four-book series with sharper writing and a co-narrator twist.

Dan Gutman's My Weird School is the on-ramp series for kids not quite ready for Wimpy Kid yet, and the first book Miss Daisy Is Crazy! sets the formula. A.J.

is a second grader who hates school, until his teacher Miss Daisy admits she cannot read or do math and the principal Mr. Klutz turns out to be even weirder. Gutman writes the voice in the same complaint-driven first person Greg Heffley uses, and Jim Paillot's art runs through every chapter. The series has run more than 20 main entries plus the My Weirder School and My Weirdest School branches, so once a kid finds it the supply is basically infinite.

I keep recommending the series to parents whose 7-year-olds are eyeing their older sibling's Wimpy Kid stack and need a step before it. Recommended for the younger end of the Wimpy Kid audience, ages 6 to 9.

Jon Scieszka's Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor is the hidden-gem pick for Wimpy Kid kids who like the cartoon-and-prose format but secretly love science class. Frank Einstein is a sixth-grade inventor working in his grandfather's repair shop, trying to win the science fair after his first two robots accidentally come to life with personalities of their own.

Scieszka, who wrote The Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio series, writes for the same kid he has been writing for since 1992, and Brian Biggs's illustrations and diagrams run on every page. Hidden gem because the series finished its six-book run in 2017 and has not had a TV adaptation yet to push it back onto bestseller lists.

Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans who quietly want their next read to teach them something about antimatter or robotics on the way to the punchline.

Tom Watson's Stick Dog is the hidden-gem pick I hand to Wimpy Kid kids who love the doodle pages most. The book is narrated by an anonymous kid who tells the reader, on page one, that he cannot draw, so the dogs in the story are going to be stick figures.

The narrator-as-author conceit is the joke, and it lets Watson lean into the bad drawing on purpose, which kids find funnier than slick illustrations. Stick Dog and his four hungry friends spend the book trying to steal hamburgers from a family at a campsite, and the plan keeps falling apart.

Hidden gem because the 11-book series sold a million copies but never broke into Wimpy Kid territory in the cultural conversation. Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans who want a hungrier, sillier, dog-led read with the same low-stakes high-comedy energy.

Jeffrey Brown's Star Wars: Jedi Academy is the hidden-gem pick for Wimpy Kid kids who could not get enough of the diary format and also live in their parents' Star Wars hand-me-downs. Roan Novachez wanted to go to Pilot Academy Middle School like his big brother, and instead he gets accepted to Jedi Academy on Coruscant, where Yoda is the headmaster and Roan is the new kid who has never held a lightsaber.

Brown writes the whole book as Roan's journal, complete with comic strips, school newspaper clippings, and report cards, in a format that is openly modeled on Wimpy Kid. Hidden gem because Scholastic licensed it under the Star Wars umbrella rather than pushing Brown the way Abrams pushed Kinney.

Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans whose parents grew up on Star Wars and want a six-book series that earns the comparison.

Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud's The Cartoonists Club, released April 2025 from Scholastic Graphix, is the most-anticipated illustrated middle-grade book of the year, and Wimpy Kid kids who lean toward graphic-novel territory should pick it up next. Four kids start an after-school comics club: Makayla has ideas but cannot finish a story, Howard can draw but his dad calls comics a waste, Lynda fills sketchbooks but obsesses over her mistakes, and Art just loves making things.

Telgemeier brings the friendship-and-feelings register from Smile, and McCloud, who wrote Understanding Comics, slips in actual how-to-make-comics teaching between the chapters. The book reads as both a story and a craft primer.

Released April 1, 2025. Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans who finished the diary stack and are ready to make their own.

John Patrick Green's InvestiGators: Class Action, released September 2024 from First Second, is the eighth volume in a series that has now sold more than four million copies and is a near-perfect crossover for Wimpy Kid readers who also love Dog Man. Mango and Brash are crime-fighting alligator agents who travel through toilets, and in this entry they go undercover as middle-school students to investigate the case.

Green writes a fast, wisecracking voice for both gators, and the panels are dense with sight gags and pun-heavy dialogue. The series sits in pure graphic-novel territory rather than the cartoon-and-prose hybrid, but the comic instincts overlap with Wimpy Kid completely.

Released September 24, 2024. Recommended for Wimpy Kid fans who like Dog Man and want a smarter, punnier series with eight books and counting.