PUFFIN BOOKS
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID
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First published in the English language in the USA
by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS, 2019
Original English title: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball
(All rights reserved in all countries by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.)
Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Puffin Books 2019
Wimpy Kid text and illustrations copyright Wimpy Kid, Inc., 2019
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, WIMPY KID, and the Greg Heffley design
are trademarks of Wimpy Kid, Inc., and the design of this books jacket
is trade dress of Wimpy Kid, Inc. All rights reserved.
Book design by Jeff Kinney
Cover design by Chad W. Beckerman and Jeff Kinney
The moral right of the author/illustrator has been asserted
ISBN: 9780241396940
All correspondence to:
Puffin Books, Penguin Random House Childrens
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
t o sco o ter
M A R CH
Sunday
Ive read that in ancient times they used to bury
kings and pharaohs with all their possessions.
Back then I guess they thought you could take
your things WITH you into the afterlife.
Well, if I get buried with all MY junk, I might
really REGRET it later on.
Moms having me do some spring cleaning to get rid
of things I dont NEED . Well, that seemed like a
good idea until I realized just how much stuff Ive
actually G O T .
I spent the whole morning going through my
closet, and its crazy how much was packed in there.
And its not like it was ORGANIZED or anything.
Ive basically been throwing things in my closet since
we first moved in.
Digging through my closet was like going through
my CHILDHOOD . And the further back I went,
the further back in TIME it took me.
The stuff near the front of the closet was all
junk I tossed in there over the past year, like
homework and comic books. But after I got
those things out of the way I started finding
stuff ID FORGOTTEN about.
I found a model rocket I got for my tenth
birthday and a costume I wore for Halloween a
few years ago. And there was a bunch of other
things I didnt even know I still had.
When I dug a little DEEPER, I found something
I thought Id lost YEARS ago. It was a binder
full of stickers Id collected in the third grade.
I used to be OBSESSED with stickers, especially
the scratch-and-sniff kind. I collected all the
GOOD smells, like bubble gum and candyfloss
and that sort of thing, but I had all the really
G R O SS ones, too.
So, when a kid on my street wanted to know
what giraffe poop or rotten meat loaf smelled
like, theyd come to ME .
One of these days Im gonna write my
AU T OBIOGRAPH Y , and its gonna include
scratch-and-sniff stickers to mark all the
different moments in my life.
I kept digging through my closet and found stuff
from KINDERGARTEN , like a fish I made by
tracing my hand on to a piece of card.
I used to LOVE doing arts and crafts back
then. And, if anyone ever tried to BUL L Y me
about it, theyd get a face full of glitter.
Another project I found in my closet was a gift
I made for my mom in pre-school but never gave
her. It was a paper f lower with a picture of my
face in the middle, glued to a popsicle stick.
When I made the thing, I put it in a little plant
pot filled with earth. But I tripped on the front
step when I got home from school that day, and
thats why I never gave it to her.
I was GLAD when I finally reached the back
of my closet, but, to be honest, I was a little
DIS A PPOINTED , too.
When I was younger I read this book about
these kids who could visit a whole different
W O R LD by going through their wardrobe, and
I always wondered if I might be able to do the
same thing with MINE .
But I thought that whoever lived on the other
side might not be too happy with me for tossing
all my JUNK in there over the years.
When I told Mom I was done emptying my closet
today, she said I needed to put everything into
three piles: one to keep, one to donate and one
to throw away. B ut I figured if I had to let
go of any of my junk I might as well make some
MONEY from it. So I decided to have a Y A R D
S A LE .
Mom thought that was a GREAT idea. So she
gave me a magazine that had all sorts of tips on
how to do it RIGHT .
All the ideas in the magazine were corny and
old-fashioned , though . There was one section on
how to create a sign to get people to come to
your yard sale, and all the examples they showed
were really BO R ING .
I knew that if I wanted people to actually show
up at my yard sale I needed to do something a
little more E YE-C A T CHING . So I whipped up a
sign I knew would do the trick.
I made a few copies of my sign and headed out to
post them around the neighbourhood. But Mom
stopped me before I got out of the front door.
Mom made me make signs that were more like the
ones in the magazine, and after I was finished,
I stapled them to some telephone poles on our
street. Then I hauled everything down from my
bedroom and started setting it all out on some
plastic tables.
Each table had its own category, like clothes
and books and that kind of thing. But some
stuff wasnt easy to categorize, so I had to get
creative.
I had a bunch of gifts from my grandparents and
older relatives that Ive never even T OUCHED ,
so I put all those things together on one table.
I also had a bunch of birthday cards that were still
in pretty good shape. So I used some Tippex to
cover up my name and set them out on their own
table.
I put all my broken toys on another table and
hoped some little kids who couldnt READ would
come to the yard sale.
I stuffed all my random items, like marbles and a
few pencil stubs, into some socks and pinned them
to a table.
I also created a table full of things for people
who had money to burn.
I put all my old arts-and-crafts projects on
their own table, just in case some kids needed a
gift for their parents but didnt want to put in
the TIME .
While I was finishing up, Mom came outside to
check out my yard sale, and she seemed pretty
IMPRESSED . But she said I should hold on to
the things Id made myself, since th a t stuff is
really SPECIAL .
I told Mom that if she wanted something, she
could always buy it HERSELF . So she offered
me three dollars for that paper f lower Id made