Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Middle-schooler Greg Heffley's hand-lettered diary, drawn in stick figures, became the book that made reluctant readers into readers. Every school library's most dog-eared spine.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by cartoonist Jeff Kinney began online on Funbrain with daily entries from September 2004 to June 2005, then arrived in print on April 1, 2007 from Amulet Books. Greg narrates his middle-school disasters in hand-lettered text and stick-figure cartoons, alongside his good-natured best friend Rowley Jefferson. The Cheese Touch—the curse of a moldy cheese slice left on the blacktop—became the ultimate symbol of social exile in every school: whoever touched it became an outcast until they passed it on.
The series exploded. More than 250 million copies sold as of 2020 made it one of the best-selling book series ever. A film adaptation of the first book arrived March 19, 2010. Kinney also created Poptropica, the browser game that became its own nostalgia pillar. Wimpy Kid proved a simple formula worked: middle school was universal, the humor was sharp, and the stick figures invited every kid to think "I could draw that."
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Holes
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The educational-games website that teachers actually let you play during computer lab and indoor recess. Funbrain was the golden ticket: games disguised as learning, enough fun to feel like cheating the system, legitimate enough that authority figures signed off.