The Ice Age Cometh! The Meltdown: Diary of a Wimpy Kid? by Jeff Kinney

JANUARY: Everybody in my neighborhood is outside today enjoying the warm weather--except ME. It's kind of hard to enjoy a heat wave in the middle of WINTER.

Even though it's warm outside, the thermostat at school still thinks it's WINTER. So the furnace is on full blast all day, which makes it hard to concentrate in class.

If we do figure a way out of this climate mess, it's gonna be someone from MY generation. That's why I'm always nice to the SMART kids, because THEY'RE the ones who are going to save our butts.

But the warm spell stops abruptly. The Ice Age is back, and Greg and his best friend Rowley are back to frozen feet on the walk to and from school.The school bus only goes as far as Lower Surrey Street; both of them live on Upper Surrey; and the kids on Lower Surrey always ambush them if they take the bus. Greg gets the idea of taking the Whirley Street bus halfway home and then cutting across the woods to Upper Surrey Street. But despite their winter mufflers, the Whirley Street kids discover they are interlopers and chase them into the woods, where they meet up with the worst kids of all--the Mingos, who seem to live in the woods all year.

All I knew for sure was that if we stopped running, we'd be DEAD.

Just as it felt like the voices were on TOP of us, we broke through the trees and into the open.

SCREECH! Luckily Dad was paying attention or me and Rowley would've been ROADKILL!

But at least it would have been over QUICK. I'm sure the MINGOS would've take their TIME.

And then it starts snowing--hard--for days. School is called off, and when their moms decree no video games inside, Greg and Rowley decide to build the snow fort to end all snow forts, a veritable medieval redoubt of hand-crafted blocks of snow. But their challenge does not go unnoticed. The Lower Surrey Street army rises to the occasion, followed by the Whirley Street knights. Even the all-girl Safety Patrol and the Mingo family get into the melee'! Let the snowball wars begin!

It's the cold, cold world for the Wimpy Kid, in Jeff Kinney's latest in his mega-popular graphic series of middle school stories, Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Meltdown Book 13 (Amulet Books, 2018). No doubt, Greg Heffley will be ready for the spring thaw and the long-awaited end to this winter of his discontent.

It's a great book to have on hand for the first snow day! Other books (and movies) in the Diary of A Wimpy Kid series can be found here.