Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days is a novel written by American author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney, and is the fourth book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. It was released on September 13, 2009, in Canada and September 20, 2009, in the USA. The film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, released on August 3, 2012, was based on the book and its predecessor, The Last Straw. It follows the narrator, Greg Heffley, on his summer break between seventh and eighth-grade.
Contents
Plot
The book starts with Greg Heffley describing how he is more of an "indoor person" and will spend his summer vacation playing video games; unfortunately, his mother Susan stops him, saying he has better things to do. Greg and his friend Rowley go to Rowley's country club after school closes for the summer, but after a few weeks, Greg is not invited to return because he complains about even the most minor things, much to his disappointment. Greg doesn't want to go to the town pool with his mother and little brother because of the shower area he has to walk through to get to the pool.
When Rowley and his father arrive at the Heffley residence, informing Susan that Greg and Rowley have a bill for $83 worth of fruit smoothies at the country club. Both boys decline to pay, saying they were unaware they would be charged and it would be unfair to do so (Rowley's father is an architect), but Susan and Rowley's father disagree. Greg and Rowley started a lawn care service called the "V.I.P. Lawn Care Service." Unfortunately, the job is a fiasco since the boys have never used a lawn mower.
During Greg's birthday party, Susan confiscates some of his money to pay Rowley's dad's smoothie bill from the country club. Greg also gets a Ladybug, a cell phone that can only make emergency and home calls. He then discovers his uncle Joe's dog "Killer" eating half of his birthday cake. Feeling bad for how the party turned out, Susan takes Greg to the mall next day to get a makeup gift and brings Rodrick and Manny along as well. They walk around the mall until they end up in the pet store. Greg gets an angelfish, but Rodrick, on the other hand, gets a pet piranha, which he neglects, while Manny buys fish food, which he later eats as a snack. After a trip to the water park, Greg finds that the piranha (which Susan put in Greg's bowl because she thought Rodrick's bowl was disgusting due to him not cleaning it) ate his angelfish while they were gone, upsetting Greg.
When Frank learns at a Father's Day lunch that his father accidentally ran over his dog Nutty when he was young and then lied about him running away to a butterfly farm, he goes to get a new dog to cope with the loss. The family named him Sweetheart, a.k.a. Sweetie, who causes significant problems for Greg's summer.
Greg and his mom meet Rowley's family at the supermarket, where they buy groceries for their family vacation to the beach. Mrs. Jefferson invites Greg to the beach, to which his mom agrees. On the first day there, Greg realizes that the condo is really 5 miles from the beach, and that that there are no electronics there, instead reading books for entertainment. At night, it gets worse; Rowley and Greg are forced to share a bed, and the latter is abruptly woken up from Rowley, who had a nightmare that a chicken was hiding under him. One night, Greg, having gone insane, typed an SOS email on Rowley's father's work computer to Greg's mother, claiming "these people are driving me crazy". That morning, Susan had replied to the email, revealing Greg secretly complaining. Later, they head to the boardwalk, where Greg finally goes on the Cranium Shaker, a ride he wanted to go on all summer, though the ride was so intense it made him incredibly sick. Afterward, with just a dollar given, Greg and Rowley pull a prank the former learned from Rodrick; The two hid under the boardwalk and put the dollar through a crack and waited for someone to pick it up, and then Greg slid the dollar back down. Soon, a fast moving kid successfully grabbed the dollar before Greg could pull it back, and then Rowley's parents arrive; It turned out that Greg and Rowley had been missing for over an hour. That night, Greg uses a boppy balloon (a toy balloon with a rubber band attached) and snaps the rubber band against Rowley's arm, leaving a red mark. He screams at the sight of it, his parents rush in their bedroom, and Mr. Jefferson calls Greg's father to take him home, who had to drive 4 hours to and back from the condo.
After this incident, Greg is afraid that his dad will sell him to an orphanage, and he calls the police with his Ladybug phone. After a long talk with the police, Frank gives the cops tickets to a baseball game to repay them for their trouble, and it turns out that Frank was giving Sweetie to Grandma. Susan is disappointed because she bought the tickets so Frank and Greg could spend time together. After hearing about a video game competition, Greg and Rowley decide to camp in front of the game hut, thinking that's where the competition will be. However, Rowley accidentally injures Greg's hand, forcing Greg to quit the competition. At the end of the summer, Greg regrets not staying at home and playing video games throughout the summer. He reflects on how he does not speak to Rowley after the video game competition, similar to how his father hasn't spoken to him after almost being arrested. Although Susan puts the photos of the summer to her scrapbook and views as the "Best Summer Ever," Greg views it as the exact opposite.