Diary of a Wimpy Kid # 1

by Margot R. Becker

Martin captures that same awkward-kid-navigating-social-hierarchies energy, but from a slightly different angle—her characters are hustling to build something (a business) while managing friendships and embarrassment. The humor comes from realistic middle-school disasters rather than gross-out gags, and like Kinney, Martin nails how kids actually talk to each other when adults aren't listening.

by Susan Hill

Winick blends the same kind of diary-format humor and illustrated panels as Kinney, but adds genuine mystery and adventure—a boy literally falls from the sky, and our protagonist has to figure out why. It's got that same middle-school-as-obstacle-course feeling, except the obstacles occasionally include robots and dimensional rifts, keeping you genuinely curious about what happens next.

by Louise Fitzhugh

Published in 1964, this one's older than your usual middle-grade fare, but Fitzhugh writes Harriet with the same unsentimental eye Kinney uses for Greg—she's not likeable in a conventional way, she's scheming and nosy and gets herself into genuine trouble. The New York City setting and Harriet's elaborate spy notebook give it a different flavor, but that core of a kid trying to figure out the world while being kind of a mess? That's pure Kinney DNA.

by Katherine Applegate

Here's your left-turn recommendation: it's narrated by a gorilla in a shopping mall, which sounds nothing like Wimpy Kid until you realize Applegate does something Kinney does brilliantly—she makes you care deeply about a character who's trapped in an absurd situation and trying to maintain dignity. It's funny and heartbreaking in ways that sneak up on you, and the emotional stakes are genuinely higher than you'd expect from a book with a gorilla protagonist.

by Joey Reynolds

Telgemeier's graphic memoir has that same visual storytelling as Kinney's illustrations, but it's rooted in something real—her own dental disaster and the social fallout that follows. Where Kinney mines comedy from invented embarrassments, Telgemeier shows how actual middle-school humiliation feels, making her protagonist's resilience genuinely moving rather than just funny. It's like Wimpy Kid's emotional cousin.