MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

With a tenth book on the horizon, the popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney has sold over 150 million copies and spent a combined 328 weeks on The New York Times’ list of best-selling children’s series, pulling ahead of Harry Potter and closing in on Percy Jackson. Three feature film adaptations have also grossed more than $225 million worldwide. The popularity of these texts reveals much about the world of boys as they face the transition to young adulthood. Young boys today lag behind girls in literacy measures and no longer “catch up” as they had in the past. Boys are more likely to face discipline in school or be diagnosed with learning disabilities and young men are now far less likely to finish high school or college. Increasingly, what resonates with young male audiences is a protagonist who struggles with inadequacy and learns to live with, rather than overcome it, whereas the most popular female protagonists are those who overcome and lead. The film adaptations of the Wimpy Kid books heighten the inadequacies of the protagonist. Roles for girls are expanded or completely added, differences in size and stature are exaggerated and moments of humiliation are visually emphasized. Moreover, the ambivalence of educators and parents about the value of the series also demonstrates the tendency to minimize the crises facing boys in today’s world. Educators continue to argue about whether these books are substantive enough to include in reading lists, describing them as books that can lure reluctant readers (boys) into the joys of reading more challenging fiction. Parents tend to focus on the shortcomings of Greg as a role model, further suggesting to these young readers that the characters who most resonate with them are actually inadequate on multiple levels.