Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 11) by Jeff Kinney
| Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 11) by Jeff Kinney | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: Children will be rushing about like crazy trying to read this eleventh main novel in this series – but for me there was too much of that pell-mell feeling about the plotting. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 224 | Date: November 2016 |
| Publisher: Puffin | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9780141373010 | |
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There's one thing we learn from this book's October setting – Greg Heffley's best buddy Rowley is a complete scaredy-cat. Everything makes him quake in fright, but it should surely be Greg quivering in the corner with fear, considering what his life brings him. He's begun to think he's in a sequel to The Truman Show, due to the fact everything must all be scripted against him, and life like that doesn't occur naturally. His mum thinks a drive to get him registered as 'Talented and Gifted' at school will help with the family self-esteem, but there are all sorts of things going against everyone, ranging from a disembodied witch's laugh to killer geese marauding around town. Yes, this is certainly a Hallowe'en to be glad to see the other side of…
Here's the thing with this book – at times I had to wonder just how much it was scripted, as well – not just against Greg, but in fact scripted full stop. After once more front-loading the novel with some prime stand-up (seriously, the beats of the illustrations and the only-so-slightly wacky subject matters have as much forethought in them as the best comedy routines) we get no end of weird things. Here's a new horror novel franchise that the school's wrapped up in, for some little purpose. Here's a balloon race with a week for the attached postcards to gain mileage – although Greg has turned his into a three-page begging letter, seeing as there is candy hanging in the balance of the result. And here's an extended scene with a vomiting pig – we did tell you the family owned a pig, didn't we?
Well yes, on page 57. If you forgot that detail from last time then you will find it a shock. A lot of the time things just crop up on these pages and take you by surprise – Greg's dream world doesn't really need to be here, his brother has bearing on some pages then none for vast swathes of it, and his own father seems to come and go, only being dragged into proceedings reluctantly and willy-nilly.
Yes, I get what Jeff Kinney is doing – he's imbuing the book with a sense of humour regarding the bizarre, and making sure that what he does do at the end is bring so much back as a call-back, and wrapping so much up in what had been given a foreshadowing that the young, with-it reader will be amazed at the cleverness, but I do think the book was trying to have its cake and eat it. For me it drifted off-topic too often, into things – to repeat – that are left out of the whole cleverness, and therefore do stand out as a little needless. It also heinously forgets to explain the pig's prowess, so I'm left taking the whole thing with a pinch of salt.
Still, I'm much too old for this kind of book, according to those at least to whom it's advertised. They will, I think, have a much more forgiving attitude to events here, and won't mind that things here take this quite peculiar wispy path from subject to subject. To them, this will speak very much of the parent hiding the sweets, and of the school music lesson and the vitally important choice of instrument, and they will find no problem in the intelligent Greg having a friend who uses a plaything the pig has mastered with which to communicate, and hasn't seemed to have progressed from there. To these children, they're Gregs and I'm a Rowley, and I do accede there is a bright cleverness about some of how everything gets wrapped up here, but I do think things needed to be a little less slapdash to be thought of as of a standard with what's gone before.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
The likes of Danger Really is Everywhere: School of Danger by David O'Doherty and Chris Judge provide a similarly lively and pictorial slice of silliness.
Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid Books in Chronological Order
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