tbh edgy middle grade novels were pretty common at the time (Robert Cormier’s whole thing) but few were genuinely funny
People don’t understand how much Diary of a Wimpy Kid revolutionized a genre previously dominated by twee, sententious Bildungsromane.
DoaWP brought an amoral realism that eviscerated comforting fictions with cold, acerbic irony. The Madame Bovary of middle school.