Behind the 8 Ball! Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck by Jeff Kinney

Mom's always saying that friends will come and go, but family is forever.  Well, if that's true, I could be in for a rough ride.

I mean, I love my family and all, but I'm just not sure we were meant to LIVE together! Right now things are a little dicey.

But at least Greg Heffley can count on his BF Rowley, who has always been there for him, to carry his heavy backpack, copy all his English essays into cursive, and scout out the sidewalk on the way to school for dog poop.

That is, until NOW.

Rowley's been my best friend ever since he moved into my neighborhood, but things have really changed between us recently.

And it's all because of a GIRL.

Believe me, the last person in the world I ever thought would get a girlfriend was Rowley.

Suddenly Rowley has moved up from eating his lunch with the other losers in the hall outside the overcrowded cafeteria to dining with Abigail at the Couples Table. When Greg has him for a sleepover, Rowley spends most of the time giggling on his phone with Abigail. Rowley's got other priorities now, and Abigail makes it clear that Greg is the odd man out.

But Greg decides to be proactive and find a new friend to train for Rowley's job. Unfortunately, the only candidate left in the neighborhood is certified mega-nerd Fregley.  Still, Greg is desperate.

I've noticed that at my school, the most popular guys have a funny sidekick. And girls never go for the funny sidekick, so Fregley wouldn't even be a threat to me.

Today at lunch I went to find Fregley to invite him to sit at our table. He was so far back in the line to get a seat that he was out in the hallway near the boys' bathroom. I asked Fregley if he knew how to do any tricks, and he took off his shirt and put bubble gum in his belly button. and then, no lie, he started chewing it!

Word of Fregley's talent got around, and for the rest of the lunch period, almost every boy in our class was at our table wanting to see what ELSE Fregley could chew.

In fact, it got so crowded there wasn't even a place for ME to sit.

The only place left to sit is Fregley's abandoned piece of hallway floor in front of the boys' bathroom, which is where Greg finds himself relegated to eating his lunch.

But Greg doesn't give up his quest for popularity. When he discovers his big brother Rodrick's long-lost Magic Eight Ball among the dust bunnies under his bed, Greg figures that with that device's advice on his social life, maybe his luck will take a turn for the better, in Jeff Kinney's latest entry in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck, Book 8 (Amulet Books, 2013).

This eighth book in his best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, published November 5, has already hit the top of the charts--and for good reason. Kinney's simple stick-figure cartoons capture the inner nerd of everyone who has ever made it into or through the middle school years, and, speaking personally, can reduce even, um, mature readers to helpless, snorting giggles. Copyright law frowns on reproducing internal illustrations from books, so just take my advice, get the book, and give your middle-schooler or your own inner dork's belly button some laughs to chew on.

Here's hoping Greg Heffley, like Peter Pan, never grows up.

Accidents of Birth: The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye by Bonnie Shimko

My mother tried to kill me before I was born. Even then I disappointed her.

When Mama got even meaner, Daddy took off. That woman never missed a chance to tell me how it was my fault that her husband left Sullivan's Falls with Margo LaRue, the town-hussy--at high noon, so everybody in town could witness the spectacle.

Being named after Amelia Earhart by Grandaddy Thompson hasn't helped Amelia fly high; it seems that mama always manages somehow to shoot her down. Well into her forties when Amelia came along, Mama blames her husband's departure and the rest of her miseries on Amelia, dressing her in twenty-year-old hand-me-downs from her much older sister Charlotte and making her wear ugly, masking-tape-mended glasses for years. Amelia is an outcast at school, and her only support is her grandfather who loves her dearly. "All a person needs in life is one true friend," he says, but Amelia despairs of ever finding even that salvation.

And then Fancy Nelson comes to town--the first black child the town has ever seen. The daughter of a pretty and loving mother, hired as housekeeper for the influential town judge despite the small-town prejudices of Sullivan's Falls, Fancy has what Amelia wants and needs, a loving mother, nice clothes, and total comfort inside her own skin. And Fancy chooses her immediately as a friend.

When her Grandfather's stroke renders him speechless and he is sent to the local nursing home, Amelia turns to Fancy's family, a nurturing mother and the strangely fatherly Judge Watson as a surrogate for her own train wreck of a family. And as their friendship grows, Amelia begins to break out of the protective shell she has always worn at home and at school and try her wings a little, too.

Soon those closely kept family secrets begin to unwind, for Fancy as well as for Amelia. Amelia finds herself strangely drawn to the local Avon lady, that even Fancy calls "that floozy LaRue," even though she soon comes to realize that Margo is the woman for whom her missing father left town before her birth. Margo is still flamboyant, but she is also warm and honest, and like Fancy's mother, immediately sees the child inside Amelia who desperately needs mothering. As events unfold, Amelia and Fancy both uncover those hidden stories which have shaped their lives, and both are changed by what they learn. Then, Amelia's mother dies suddenly, bringing about an unforeseen change in her life and the revelation that her mother, unable to give her what she needed at her birth, has amazingly managed to give her exactly what she now needs to be reborn.

In The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010) author Bonnie Shimko has created a unique character of great resilience, humor, and independence, a worthy successor in the tradition of Scout Finch and Harriet M. Welch. Amelia Earhart Rye is a clear-eyed realist who has no dreams, but she does have the power to love, and when she breaks free, the metamorphosis is a joy to see. As Publishers Weekly puts it, "Shimko's story is original, and Amelia's distinctive voice and likable nature will have readers rooting for her in times of trouble and cheering her ultimate good fortune. The happy ending is immensely satisfying."

Paddock of Dreams: The Truth about Horses, Friends, & My Life as a Coward by Sarah P. Gibson

So, you think you love horses? Loads of people say they do, especially to me. Usually, though, it's new girls at school. When they find out my family owns horses, they sit next to me at lunch and try to be nice. They munch away on their sandwiches, looking all dreamy-eyed.

"So, Sophie"--one will begin by stating the obvious--"you have horses."

I nod and keep eating.

"How many?" she will persist, and I know that even though she's sitting right beside me, she's actually far away--riding a galloping horse, usually pure white, across a field of waving grass.

It's time to snap her out of the spell. "Two and a half," I answer.

"Oh--a pony! Is it a small one? The kind you can drive around in a cart?" she gushes.

"Well..." I hesitate. "We used to drive her around in a cart," I admit.

Now here is where I usually tell the story of Heidi and the Pony Cart.

The story of "Heidi and the Pony Cart (Or, How Not to Make Friends)" ends badly, with a runaway pony, Really (short for, the family learns too late, Really Mean,) racing across the countryside until at last too winded to run, she stops momentarily and Sophie and Heidi bail headfirst out of the cart, only to see it disappear in another wild circuit of the area.

After Gramp fetched us home, my mother offered Heidi ice cream, petting the new kittens, and even going sailing, but Heidi stayed quiet. She didn't blink a lot, either, as I recall. We never played together again.

Really is no prize as a saddle pony either. Anyone foolish enough to climb upon her back gets bitten, bucked off, or scraped off on the nearest fence. If these capers fail to dislodge the determined would-be rider, Really just drops to the ground and attempts to roll over on the brave equestrienne. Sophie is no fool; she refuses even to try to ride Really, but then Melissa Maloney moves onto the island and seems determined both to be Sophie's friend and ride her pony.

"Look, Melissa," I confessed, "they forgot to tell us the second part of this pony's name when we bought her. Honestly, she is Really Mean, and the truth is, no one rides her."

"Oh, yeah?" Melissa pondered this for a while. "Well, could I try to ride her?"

And with that doughty statement, Melissa's and Sophie's career as daring riders of dangerous, dumb, and downright disturbing horses begins. Really pulls all of her tricks--wheeling around to bite Melissa's legs, slamming her legs into the paddock fence, bucking her off into the manure pile, and finally doing her famous stop, drop, and roll maneuver. Battered but not broken, Melissa gets up and gets back on nine times.

"Geez, Louise!" Melissa said, gasping for air. "That is one REALLY MEAN pony!"

I hopped down from my perch on the fence and faced Melissa. "You're all right, Melissa Maloney," I said.

But Sophie's optimistic mother is not easily dissuaded from her dream of equestrienne daughters, and believing that they only need to find the right horse, goes on to buy two more--Sweetheart, who is a real sweetheart in the paddock but once outside tries to swipe riders off on every tree limb, and Fancy, a monster eighteen-hand cowhorse who is dumb as a rock and as big as Gibraltar.

Sophie tries to remain determined never to mount any of these beasts, but finally, watching Lawrence of Arabia with her dad one night, even she is suddenly taken with the vision of herself galloping along the island's sands on her snow white steed, (who looks a little like Sweetheart) hair streaming behind her and the wind in her face. But getting to that point involves a lot of hilarious horsey adventures for Sophie and Melissa, not the least of which is their Halloween night attempt to round up a wild moose which they mistake in the darkness for a runaway Fancy.

The Truth About Horses, Friends, & My Life As a Coward is the perfect antidote to the sometimes sappy girl-meets-horse genre which nevertheless ends with a sort of friendly truce between Sophie and her mounts. A great story of middle school friendship and taking on your fears with self-deprecating humor and not a little courage, this one is a laugh-a-minute read which even (or perhaps especially) non-horse lovers will love.