Concerning & Potentially Concerning Content

We are going to list out the concerning content here. As we do please keep in mind that when taking into account the larger font and that nearly half of most pages are drawings, this all comes in a relatively small amount of overall book… and yet still, all of this. It is also critical to know that there is hardly any growth, no real lessons learned and (most importantly) no indication to the reader that any of the content below is wrong in any way whatsoever. Back cover of the book has Greg, the main character, saying that one day he will be famous, but for now he is “stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons” with an image intended to point out 2 of the classmates he is referring to. Similarly, early in the story he says that later when he is rich and famous he will have better things to do than answer people’s stupid questions all day long. He quickly points out someone he doesn’t want to sit next to in class and again a drawing is used to show someone who looks different the reader is supposed to understand just by looks why that is. In the common theme these days of school being a total negative thing, Greg says that he thinks middle school is “the dumbest idea ever invented”. He considers getting into the gifted class a negative thing because it means more work. The drawing shows him immediately trying to intentionally fail a test to avoid it. Says that he learned from his brother to set people’s expectations real low on purpose, made worse by a drawing showing his brother completely disrespecting his father. At one point a girl prevents him from cheating and he says that he will be looking for a way to get back at her. When he figures out a way to get out of most of his math class he celebrates. Greg also comes up with a list of curse words when he is supposed to be doing a school project. There is one boy who knows more curse words than anyone else and he is held in high esteem for it. Towards the end Greg informs young readers that when they have a substitute you can say just about anything about anything you want and you won’t get in trouble”. Example is shown where Greg says “your mama” followed by “your big fanny granny” to a sub who is trying to run the class. He indicates to readers that in elementary school the fastest runner “got all the girls”, but that now it is about the kind of clothes you wear, how rich you are or if you have a “cute butt” or whatever. He comments that he will soon be rising up the popularity ranking because a classmate is soon getting braces. There is a comment made about a “bunch of hot girls”. Later a heavy metal magazine has a woman in a bikini laying across the hood of a car. Little brother ends up bringing this to school to share, to which Greg comments that mom shouldn’t have gotten so worked up about. Someone also mentions kissing a girl behind the lockers. Greg says it is great having a best friend around (one who is implied to be even less cool than him) because he gets to use all of the mean tricks that his older brother does on him on someone else (one is shown in a drawing). Later he plans to attack kids from another neighborhood (not friends) with a giant snowball. Halloween comes up a few times in a positive light. Discussion of haunted houses, vampires, people without heads, masked chainsaw guy, etc. They make a haunted house themselves and decide it is better not to tell Greg’s or his friend’s parents. They mention wanting things like a lake of blood, a death slide, etc. They also lie to drum up business. Later there is a gross drawing of a skeleton head decaying. Christmas is also present, but it is almost completely focused on presents. As far as being a big brother himself, Greg says he is embarrassed of the nickname his younger brother calls him. He is shown throwing away a birthday gift from his younger brother because it has this name on the tag. Another page has him kicking over his brother’s blocks and toys. He calls his tiny brother’s attempts to make a snowman ‘pathetic’ and kicks it over (even claims he “almost couldn’t help it). He wants to constantly play video games. When his Dad forces him to go outside he instead sneaks over to his friends house so he can play them over there. While over there he also deceives his friend’s dad by putting a violent game into an educational case so they will be allowed to play it. Even worse, on the way home he runs through the sprinklers in order to deceive his father into thinking he did what he asked. He also blatantly ignores his dad’s command to give away a toy. He steals his older brother’s CD that he knows he is not allowed to listen to. After waiting for no teachers to be around he listens to it at school. Heavy metal is brought up a couple times and never shown in the negative light it deserves. Greg makes a comic where someone steps on a crack causing their mom to die. Then a series of rude/crude humor comics are shown. One shows a specific teacher having soiled their pants. To win the comic competition Greg removes and hides the best comic entries from others so their work won’t be submitted. Greg terrorizes a group of kindergarteners he is supposed to be helping. A neighbor mistakes him for his best friend during the incident and yells at him and Greg doesn’t make it right. Later his friend gets in huge trouble and despite having many chances to fix it Greg doesn’t, allowing his friend to lose his position on the safety patrol. Author doubles-down, making a huge mockery of the whole thing by having Greg joke about it at the end of this section (did we mention no repentance and growth?). The family is shown in church at one point, but main character is shown spending his time thinking about people (calling one a jerk) based on mean notes from his brother’s yearbook, to which he says this made church “a lot more interesting”. His granny’s house gets toilet papered because of something he did and Greg happily just leaves it for her to clean up. He wants to be a mean witch in a play because he would get to do all types of mean things to Dorthy. He ends up being a tree and eventually ruins the play by not singing when he is supposed to (doesn’t want to be embarrassed) and by throwing apples at another girl (calls doing this a dream come true). Despite ruining everything, leaves happy, saying he was ‘entertained’. He also praises a young boy for sneaking a video game into a play practice. Dad is shown in a very modern, unbiblical light of being subservient to Mom. Greg comments that dad was against his brother forming a band, but mom was for it so it happened. In another instance, dad is said to try and squirm out of something, but once mom makes up her mind it is happening. Later we are told that dad and mom argued for a few minutes, but dad was no match for mom. Greg also mocks his friend's dad. Terms like the following are used throughout: sissy, jerk, morons, runts, dork, noogies, jocks, freak show, bum, stupid, dumb moron. There are also plenty of comments like: stupidest idea ever, kissing butts, etc. It should also be noted that, while in many books the negative content is sporadically dispersed amongst a great story with positive moral content, that is not at all the case here. It is one morally objectionable joke setup after another, shown as journal entries from a boy no Christian parent should hope their child will emulate.