Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School

Author	Jeff Kinney
Illustrator	Jeff Kinney
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Genre	Children's novel Graphic Novel Comedy
Publisher	Amulet Books
Publication date	November 3, 2015 (worldwide)
Media type	Print (paperback, hardcover)
Pages	217 story pages (224 altogether)
ISBN	978-1-4197-1701-7
Preceded by	The Long Haul

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School is a 2015 children's novel written by American author Jeff Kinney and is the tenth book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The book was released on November 3, 2015 worldwide, and an extract from the book was released online on October 28, 2015.^[1]

Plot

Greg Heffley starts by explaining his current life, and the way his family talked about how life was back when they were young and their lack of technology. He wonders how science, technology, and humans will evolve as he gets older. When Greg goes back to school, he decides to mix up his routine so, he signs up to be a Homework Buddy and is assigned to help a third-grader named Frew. However, after discovering how intelligent Frew is, Greg takes advantage of him and gets Frew to do his homework.

Greg's family houses their Grandpa with them since the rent at his retirement home, Leisure Towers, was too high to pay for. Since Grandpa is living with them, Greg's father Frank becomes more stubborn and stressed, and is constantly getting on Greg's case. For example, he gets incredibly mad when Greg forgets to put the cap back on his toothpaste tube. But, Greg isn't alone, Dad also gets on Greg's brother Rodrick's case. When he sees his wife Susan give money to Rodrick for petrol, Dad gets angry and tells him to get a job so he can get his own money. Rodrick gets a job as a mascot for the local ice cream parlour, the Old-Timey Ice Cream Parlour.

Grandpa gets depressed when he finds out his girlfriend, Darlene, dumped him for leaving Leisure Towers, but then gets happy by searching in a dating website, and he creates at least fifty relationships. Greg receives a letter at school for a week-long trip to Hardscrabble Farms, a farm camp in the middle of the woods, but Greg decides not to go. Greg also gets moved up to harder classes because Frew has been giving him perfect scores on his homework. When the family goes to visit Rodrick at work, they find out he has vanished; they find him walking down the freeway because he got pulled over for not having any passengers and his van gets repossessed. When the family get home they find out that Grandpa is having a party with the many relationships he found on his dating website. Frank gets the women to leave, and confronts Grandpa, who says that he accidentally pressed 'Send all' when he wanted to invite one woman over to watch a movie. Grandpa is no longer trusted at home.

Meanwhile, Susan has made all the old people sign her petition to unplug the town for the weekend from any electronics. On the first day, Susan makes the entire town come down to the town park to clean it up. Greg gets bored, and his Dad suggests that he should set up a lemonade stand and sell lemonade for money. Greg thinks it is a good idea, and calls down his best friend Rowley to help. But neither of them have any idea how to make lemonade, so they buy a lot of lemons and sugar and pours them all into a beaker as well as water, but Frank tells them they did it all wrong. Once he tells them what they did wrong (e.g. they used limes and didn't cut the lemons), Greg and Rowley produce a batch of lemonade. However, someone else sets up a better lemonade stand than theirs, so they decide to sell water instead. Because nobody is buying the water there, the boys move their business to the town park, where they think they can get a lot of customers. When Susan sees Greg, she wants him to help, but Greg wants to sell the water, unbeknownst to them that some gardeners had taken all of Greg's water and used it to water the flowers. Greg is forced to help the clean-up.

During the clean-up, some Girl Scouts appear and start to bring discipline to the cleaners. Some convicts also appear to help, but they just goof off. Greg, who can't take it anymore, flees the park and runs to the nearby creek. However, his homework buddy Frew follows him, as well as one of the convicts named Billy. A Girl Scout eventually spots them and they climb over a fence and escape. They try to run away from town, however Susan finds the trio thanks to the tracking device on her phone. The next day, Greg accidentally drops the toothpaste cap down the sink drain. Knowing that his Dad will get mad when he finds out it's missing, Greg tries to break open the pipes to get it out, however he ends up creating a large puddle that starts dripping from the kitchen ceiling. Greg asks Grandpa to help, and Grandpa tells Greg to get in the car so they can go to a hardware store and find some waterproof paint to cover up the water stain. Halfway through the ride, Greg realizes that Grandpa's driving license was revoked, especially when Grandpa drives on the wrong side of the road. They eventually run out of gas, and Grandpa walks off to a nearby gas station. While Greg stays in the car, he sees Billy and the convict doing community service and he hides in fear. He accidentally removes the handbrake, and the car starts moving and plummets into a ditch.

When Greg realizes that Dad will discover the car is damaged, Greg enrolls to go on the Hardscrabble Farms trip. Grandpa gives Greg a book to read while on the trip. When Greg gets there, he sees the last group of tired children leave, with one kid holding a sign which says 'Beware of Silas Scratch'. Everyone gets into a panic when they hear the story of Silas Scratch, a farmer who was kicked off his land and went to live in the woods, where he survived by eating slugs and berries and also went crazy and grew his fingernails really long. Greg gets put in a group with a bunch of uncool leftovers, including Rowley, and their chaperone is Rowley's dad, Mr. Jefferson. After everyone unpacks their stuff, the groups start by performing several trust exercises, however when a big boy called Jeffrey jumps off, causing Rowley and Gareth to crash into each other. It ends up with Gareth's tooth getting lodged in Rowley's head, and Rowley is taken home.

The next day most of Greg's classmates are getting homesick, and some people are trying to purposely get ill so they can go home. The day after that, Rowley returns to the camp, and gives Gareth's tooth back to him. Everyone gets told that on the last night they have to sleep in the woods, which scares everyone as they believe Silas Scratch will appear from his shack and kill them. Greg's group goes out into the woods to practice starting a fire, and when Mr. Jefferson tells everyone to go out and find some kindling, Rowley brings back a lot of poison ivy, which gives Rowley spots and makes Mr. Jefferson have trouble breathing as he inhaled the fumes. Rowley's mom is called and she takes them both home for good. When Greg returns to the cabin, he finds out that the boys from another group have raided his cabin and stolen a lot of useful items. Greg is mad until he finds Grandpa's book and finds out that it contains a lot of information on how to make useful items out of little material and how to survive in the wilderness. Greg uses a boy named Emilio's glasses to focus the sunlight on a dry leaf and start a fire, and he and Jeffrey high-five, accidentally breaking Emilio's glasses in the process. That night, it stinks in the group's cabin, and they decide to raid a girl group's cabin to find some deodorant. However, they accidentally wake up the girls (who are actually Girl Scouts) and decide to run away. Luckily, a boy named Graham stole a bag from the girl's cabin, however it contains the clothes of a teacher named Mrs. Graziano, who tells them off and decides to immediately find a new chaperone, who is actually Greg's Dad Frank.

The next day everyone keeps talking about Silas Scratch, and Frank joins in, saying that when he was little he heard that some kids went into Silas Scratch's shack and never came out. Everyone begs the chaperones to let them stay inside, but they make them stay in the wilderness overnight. Greg's group is terrified as they sit around the fire, and Greg walks into the dark woods to find some more firewood. However he gets scared when he finds what looks like Silas Scratch's shack. He enters from the suspiciously unlocked back door, and finds out that the shack is a maintenance shack. When he looks around he sees an amazing bathroom, but is shocked and surprised to find his Dad there after he took a shower there. Dad tells Greg that when he was there a long time ago, the bathroom situation was even worse than it is now. One day in the woods, when he was searching for firewood like Greg, he came across the maintenance shack and discovered the bathroom and shower in it. He then reveals that he came up with the Silas Scratch story to make sure nobody else came near the shack or everyone would find out about the bathroom. Greg is mad at first, but then decides to keep it a secret from everyone as he might be back again someday, and when he is, he'll want to use that bathroom too. Greg and his Dad return to their group's campsite, where they find out that their group had burned the wood from their shelter as well as Greg's book to keep warm. Dad smuggles them all back into their cabin to sleep in. In the morning, everyone packs up and Dad offers Greg a ride back in his car instead of the bus, and Greg agrees. When he sees the next group of children come, he writes a note on a letter and shows it to them, which says 'Beware of Silas Scratch'.

Marketing

The book was announced on March 9, 2015. The cover, color, and title were revealed on April 27, 2015 during a livestream co-hosted by Jeff Kinney, with appearances from Robert Capron live on stage, and Zachary Gordon through a video call.^[2] An extract from the book was released exclusively by The Guardian on June 29, 2015.^[3]

Release

The book was released on November 3, 2015 worldwide.

The book was released in more than 90 countries and territories around the world,^[4] setting a publishing record.

References

External links

• Official Website