I should start off by saying that compared to the original book, I don't think any of the sequels matches up. Number 1 is by far the funniest. So in that light, this book is 4 stars. Compared to other books in general, this is still a five-star comedy for kids and adults who sometimes think like kids. Greg is just starting to deal with the onset of puberty (although it hasn't hit him yet), and between his eternal search to be cool and trying talk to girls, he has lots of misadventures along the way. There's the attempts at fooling the new "maid", who turns out to be a lot harder to fool then he thought. There's the upcoming family wedding, full of family "fun". His immediate family is surprisingly absent from most of his big problems, but the rest of his family has no problems filling in for him. "Health" class and its new birds and bees lessons are just as awkward for Greg as they are in real life. And of course, there's the big school sleep-over that eventually all goes down the toilet (I loved the flushing the cheesies down the toilet bit).
Compared to the other books in this series, I think this is the best one since the original. From a kids perspective, I was told that I should warn that there is a picture of a boy's butt in this book. It's not pretty, but it is funny. Beyond that, the humor here is a *little* bit more mature in general, but still accessible to the average child reader. I suppose the strongest recommendation is that the kids I know who read it were sorry it ended so quickly (i.e., the roughly 200 pages went by too fast!). Kids wanting to read more is as good a recommendation as you can get, so maybe I'll leave it at that. If you're a fan of the series, this is a good read.
