Movin' On: Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney

Tuesday: When I got to school today, Rowley was waiting by my locker, and he had a huge smile on his face. Then I noticed he had a big pimple right in the middle of his forehead. Most people would have stayed home from school if they had a zit like that, but here's what Rowley said--"MY MOM SAYS I'M BECOMING A MAN!"

Later on, I saw Rowley hanging out near the older kids' lockers. So I guess he thinks just because he got a pimple, he's part of their club now or something.

And believe me, I'm not jealous. But this is a kid who still sleeps with a pile of stuffed animals every night, so it doesn't make any sense that he gets his first pimple before I got MINE.

Everybody's favorite middle schooler is moving on, if not necessarily up. Scrutinizing himself in the mirror for non-existent signs of puberty, Greg turns to Mom and Dad for comfort:

But they told me that when they were my age, they were WAY behind their classmates. Then Dad told me not to expect to get a lot of facial hair even when I'm an adult, because he's a grown man and he only shaves once or twice a week.

Well, that was some REALLY bad news. They're always saying you can grow up to be anything you want, but now I realize that that's not true.

Greg sadly marks off jobs he can never measure up to--pirate, lumberjack, magician, criminal--from his future career choices.

And there are other issues. Now that her children are older, she says, Mom decides to take some college courses and lets the men of the house know that they now own some new chores. When that doesn't exactly work out, Mom hires a maid, Isabella, who doesn't work period. But Mom refuses to fire her even when Greg finds her nylon socks in his bed where she has been napping daily.

Algebra is not going too well, either, but Greg hopes the "Lock-In" overnight party at the school will make up for having no best friend and bad math grades. But that night Greg comes to a major realization:

At one point George Fleer started chasing people around with his outie, which was pretty terrifying.

See, this is the kind of thing I can't stand about boys my age. When it comes down to it, they're just a bunch of wild animals.

Greg figures he's stuck in middle-school limbo, but then, just as he's forced to play assistant flower boy at Uncle Gary's fourth wedding, the family matriarch Gammie calls him in for the family rite de passage, "the Talk."

I was a little nervous, but I was also kind of excited. Gammie's been around the block about a million times, and I figured she's got a lot of wisdom stored up. And to be honest with you, these days I could really use some.

Jeff Kinney's fourth installment of his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth (Amulet Books, 2010) is a bitter-sweet outing. Greg Kinney is just as funny as ever, but he's growing up a bit, too. As Gammie points out, his next few years are going to be good ones to avoid family photos that he'll regret later, but she also makes the case that getting old is no walk in the park either, and Greg figures out that maybe these last years as a kid are not so bad after all. Getting into the weeds of early adolescence just makes this series funnier, with laugh-out-loud situations that are right on target for kids going through their wonder years, and poignantly (and perhaps painfully) familiar for those who have left those years behind.

Danger for Boys: The Dark Pond by Joseph Bruchac

Joseph Bruchac, whose notable historical novel Code Talker: A Novel about the Navaho Marines of World War II was reviewed here on July 17, turns back to native American mythology to weave a captivating modern horror story in The Dark Pond.

Armin Katchatorian is a loner at his private high school secluded in the woods of upstate New York, a Shawnee-Armenian-American who is conflicted by his parents' absorption in their careers and his differences with the students around him. Armie finds comfort and acceptance in nature, calling wild birds at will and roaming the nearby forests and fields at every opportunity, but when he hikes deep into the hills, he stumbles upon a strangely disturbing pond, a dark pool into which animal tracks lead but do not return.

Amie's mind turns to the lake monster tales his mom told him as a little child, and he is mysteriously drawn back to this pond again and again. Camping overnight on a cliff above the pond, he distinctly hears something or someone kill a deer resting nearby and with first light sees where the deer has been dragged through the snow and into the pond. Armie feels the enigmatic pull of the deadly pond even while he works at school, but the irrationality of the whole thing makes it impossible to talk about with his teachers or the other students.

When he confides the story to Mitch, an Indian graduate student in zoology employed as a groundskeeper at his school, Armie's fears are finally validated. Mitch, too, has felt the hypnotic force which draws victims toward the pool and warns Armie to stay away. Still Armie cannot resist the haunting call which draws him to the dark pond.

When spring break takes the other students away, Armie decides to return to probe the mysterious attraction, but when he approaches the pond, he finds Mitch already under attack by a carnivorous creature straight from his mother's mythic tale. In a creepy and thrilling conclusion, Armie and Mitch must fight to the death with the deadly sinuous thing in the dark pond.

From bits and pieces of Native American folklore, Bruchac has once again crafted a creepy cliffhanger with a believable modern character, a real killer-diller of a short horror tale that will keep readers on edge to the end.