The Wimpy Kid Book Four Release Timeline
Book four in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is called "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw," and it came out on November 11, 2009. It was published by Amulet Books under Harcourt, the same publisher that handled the entire series up through the recent entries. That places it roughly two years after Book 3, "Hard Luck," which dropped in November 2007. The short answer: it already came out over fifteen years ago. The long answer is that some people still search this because they grew up with the later books or because they found a used copy of Book 1 recently and want to know where they stand in the reading order. The good news is that all fourteen books are currently in print, so you can grab any volume without tracking down a rare edition. I picked up my first copy of The Last Straw at a Barnes & Noble in suburban Ohio in late November 2009. The store had a small display near the children's section with the orange-striped cover propped on a card. I remember looking at the release date on the back flap and realizing it had been out for about a week already. Nobody seemed to be waiting in line. That was the thing about Wimpy Kid releases back then—they didn't generate the kind of midnight-launch energy that Harry Potter or Twilight did. Kids just bought them whenever they got to a bookstore or library.
If you are trying to figure out the correct sequence to read the books in order, here is the straightforward list:
- Book 1: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (March 2007)
- Book 2: The Last Kingdom (November 2007)
- Book 3: Hard Luck (November 2008)
- Book 4: The Last Straw (November 2009) — this is the one you are looking for
- Book 5: Dog Days (October 2009, yes it came out before Book 4 in some markets, which is confusing)
That last point about Book 5 is worth flagging because it trips people up. The US release order and the chronological reading order diverge starting around Book 4 and Book 5. If you want the story to make sense, read them in publication order, not the order they appear on some bookstore shelves. The series by Jeff Kinney has followed a loose pattern of one book per year since the early entries, though the pace slowed a bit as the franchise expanded into movies and spin-offs. Book 14, "Extra Cranky," arrived in November 2024. There have been no official announcements about Book 15 as of mid-2026, so if you are waiting for the next one, there is nothing concrete to track yet. One thing people consistently get wrong about these books is how much the humor relies on Greg Heffley's unreliable narration. The jokes are not just in the text. They are in the gap between what Greg says happened and what the drawings actually show. When you read The Last Straw, pay attention to the panel where Greg claims he is being reasonable during the ice skating incident, and then look at the drawing. The visual tells you he is entirely unreasonable. That contrast is the whole engine of the series. Missing that dynamic means you are only getting half the book.
Get the Full Details
Another detail that comes up often: the difference between the hardcover first editions and the paperback reprints. The original hardcovers have slightly different cover art in some markets. The US hardcover of Book 4 features Greg in a ski hat against an orange background, while certain international editions swap the color scheme. If you are building a shelf set, stick to one edition. Mixing hardcovers and paperbacks from different regions will look inconsistent, and the page counts vary slightly between formats due to font size and trim dimensions. For acquiring copies, the most practical route depends on what you need. Brand new sets run about $90 to $110 for the complete hardcover collection at full price. Amazon and Barnes & Noble both stock them. If you are looking for individual books, especially older titles that may have gone out of print temporarily, thrift stores and Used Book stores in the US consistently carry them for $1 to $3. eBay is reliable for complete sets at reasonable prices, but watch for listings that say "international edition" — those often have different ISBNs and thinner paper stock that does not hold up well to repeated reading by kids. The biggest bottleneck with the Wimpy Kid series is not availability. It is the fact that Jeff Kinney has been very slow to announce new installments in recent years. Between Book 13 ("Big Shot") in November 2021 and Book 14 ("Extra Cranky") in November 2024, there was a three-year gap. Readers who tracked the earlier annual release schedule expected Book 15 sooner, and the silence caused a lot of unnecessary speculation online. If you are following this series for future releases, the most reliable source is Kinney's official website and the publisher's announcements through Amulet Books. Social media fan accounts and YouTube channels will speculate, but they are not reliable for actual release dates.
One edge case that came up for me personally: a few years ago I was helping a student who had only read the later books and wanted to go back and start from Book 1. They ran into a problem where Book 2, "The Last Kingdom," was frequently listed as out of stock on major retail sites because the paperback reprint had been delayed. The workaround was simple — order it directly through the publisher's website or use a library hold through your local public library system. Public libraries in the US almost always have multiple copies of every Wimpy Kid book on hold, and the wait time was typically two to four weeks depending on your branch. That was faster and cheaper than any retail option at the time. The series as a whole works best when readers understand that Greg Heffley is intentionally written as an unlikable narrator whose perspective is flawed. The books reward rereading because details in the early volumes reference events that get recontextualized later. Book 4 specifically is where Greg's behavior starts to escalate in ways that make the later books feel more earned rather than repetitive. That shift is easy to miss if you only read one book at a time over several months. Binge-reading Books 3 through 5 in a weekend gives you a much clearer sense of how the character arc develops across that stretch. There is no official digital release for the main series beyond what Amazon and similar retailers offer in their Kindle stores. The e-books exist, but they do not always reproduce the hand-drawn illustrations with the same clarity as the print versions. The line art can appear blurry or pixelated on certain e-ink devices. If your reader supports color or high-resolution displays, the e-book version is fine. On older Kindles, the illustrations lose enough detail that you miss half the jokes I mentioned above. Print remains the better format for this particular series.
Audible does have an audiobook version narrated by Colleen Delany, and it is competent but not essential. The narration reads straight without much character differentiation, which works fine for casual listening but does not add anything you would not get from reading the text and looking at the drawings yourself. I would only recommend the audiobook if you already own the print copies and want to revisit the stories without looking at a screen. If you are trying to place Book 4 within the broader context of the franchise, it sits roughly in the middle of the narrative arc. The early books (1 through 4) establish Greg's world and his family dynamics. The middle books (5 through 9) introduce more antagonists and school-based conflicts. The later books (10 through 14) lean more heavily into teenage themes and longer story arcs. Book 4 is where the series transitions from pure slapstick into something with more sustained plot, which is why some readers find it to be the turning point that makes the rest of the series worth following.
