Information Review

The first book begins with an introduction to Greg Heffley and his middle school life. It takes place during his (presumably) sixth grade year. The book also explains the cheese touch early on. It is similar to the game of tag in which the person who touched the cheese had to get rid of it by touching someone else. In the first half of the book, events such as Halloween, learning to know how to wrestle, and acting in the play of The Wizard of Oz occur. During trick or treating, Greg and Rowley are ambushed by a group of teenagers. They then take refugee Greg's grandmother's house and taunt the teenagers from there. On Christmas day, it shows Greg getting very few presents that he would like. During Christmas, Rowley buys Greg a Big Wheel. Greg then throws a football at Rowley while he is riding the Big Wheel and Rowley breaks his arm. At school, Rowley is surrounded by girls that encourage him to get well which makes Greg mad. Later, he and Rowley joins the Safety Patrol whose responsibility are walking home morning kindergartners. However, Greg gets kicked off the Patrol for chasing Kindergartners with a worm. When Greg gets kicked off, Rowley starts to ignore Greg. Slowly, they begin drifting apart. Nearing the end of the school year, Rowley's comic strip is entered into the school's newspaper. Greg tells Rowley to list him as the co-creator because it was his idea and joke punchline. Rowley then denies that Greg had anything to do with it. They get ready to fight but are then interrupted by the teenagers they taunted on Halloween. They showed up to pay them back and they force Rowley to eat the cheese, but Greg gets away with some fast talking. The next day, Greg explains that he removed the cheese, but the way he worded it, it sounded like Greg touched the cheese. For the rest of the year, Greg was kind of in seclusion from everyone else but he and Rowley were friends again. The second book takes place during Greg Heffley's (presumably) first half of his seventh grade year. The story begins with an event happening over the summer and Greg's refusal to talk about it and Rodrick's holding it over his head. Greg's dad makes him join the swim team but he just hides out in the bathroom during the entire session. When school started up, girls swarmed around Rowley asking him about his summer trip to South America which really upset Greg. One of Greg's friends, Chirag Gupta, was supposed to move to California but instead stayed. Greg then started a prank in which all of his friends pretend Chirag isn't there. The joke, known as the "Invisible Chirag Gag" was put to the end by Chirag's father intervening. A few days later, Greg's parents leave the house and Rodrick throws a big party. Rodrick forces Greg to help him clean up but the party is eventually found out and they are grounded. The school talent show then attracts Rodrick and his band to enter so he can attract record labels. However, all the video recordings of the band turn out to be a flop and Rodrick blames Greg and releases Greg's secret. Greg then reveals that the secret was he was at his grandfather's condo and Rodrick sees his diary. Greg then runs into the bathroom to hide which turns out to be a women's bathroom and he is removed by security. The next day at school all the kids starts congratulating Greg and he learns the story got morphed into a story saying he purposely infiltrated a girl's locker room at Crossland High School. Greg doesn't tell anyone the truth and pretends it did really happen. The novel ends with Greg helping out Rodrick on his science project. As a continuation of the second book, this novel rounds out the second half of Greg's seventh grade school year. The book starts with Greg's Christmas. Similar to Christmas in the first book, he got nothing he likes from anyone. Uncle Charlie gave Greg a "laundry hoop" and Greg's mother, inspired, starts making him do his own laundry. Due to Greg's laziness, he does not do his laundry. This plays a huge role later in the story. The earlier sections of the book tells about Greg's adventures like building a time capsule. Greg, during all this time, attempts to attract "the fourth prettiest girl" in his class, Holly Hills. His attempts are shown throught out the story but never succeed. Earlier in the story, Greg talks about a teenager in his neighborhood named Lenwood Heath who his father despised, eventually, he gets sent to military school. One day, Greg and his father went to the movies and he met Lenwood Heath as the usher and he said he wants to be accepted to West Point. This inspires Greg's father to enlist him in Spag Union, a military school. Greg tries to rebut this by joining the Boy Scouts, but he gets sick on a campout and Greg's father had to sleep with two rowdy boys who kept him up all night. Also mentioned earlier in the story, the Heffley's neighbors, the Snellas, are having a half-birthday for a child. During the party, the adults in the neighborhood have to perform silly acts and Mr. Snella sends it to "America's Funniest Families", a spoof of America's Funniest Videos, to win the $10,000 prize. It is revealed that Greg's dad hates the performing and will do anything to get out of it. On the day of the party, Manny throws the Snella child's present into a tree. When Greg goes and retrieves it, his pants fall down revealing Wonder Woman underwear. Greg's father, who happened to be next in line to perform gets away as Mr. Snella turns his camera to Greg. Greg's father repays Greg by not sending him to military school. The story ends abruptly as Rowley and Greg are sitting on the curb and meet a girl named Trisha.