A family vacation to a tropical island resort should be like a trip to paradise, except that it isn’t when you are the Heffley family.

In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway, the 12th book in the best-selling Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, Greg and his family take a vacation, hoping to spend some quality family time. But Greg being Greg, and his family being as wacky as he is, have their usual share of unusual problems and struggles that follow them no matter where they may go.

The Getaway is in the typical style of the series, with loads of illustrations depicting the scenes, jokes and toilet humour, Greg’s antics that can make any mum cringe and many twists in the plot.

Greg, who is a first-time flyer, has many fears about flying and all those come out graphically on the pages to give many young readers lots to laugh about.

Dad thinks he is a seasoned traveller but his attempts to show off his skills soon prove him wrong. Mum is bent upon making sure the family spends some quality time together, doing things that typical families do, but hers isn’t a typical family. Greg can’t seem to get along with his siblings, while older brother Rodrick wants to get the freedom teens think is their right and toddler Manny is a handful!

From Greg thinking he has swallowed a sea horse to Manny catching a deadly jellyfish, to a spiders and a monkey that lives in the hotel, there are plenty of animals to spoil the vacation plans of the family. But wait there is more, they even get kicked out of their hotel — obviously for something they didn’t knowingly do wrong.

Despite all the trouble everyone gets into, the only character in the book that I felt sorry for was Mum, who never gets around to having the perfect vacation picture of the family taken.

Diehard Wimpy Kid fans will enjoy this latest offering and those who find it too wacky for their taste, which probably most people over 12 years do, will find it as unbearable as the rest of the books.

Published in Dawn, Young World, August 11th, 2018