The Meltdown is a wild ride with not just Greg, but his entire neighbourhood kids getting involved in the kind of epic snowball fights we all dream of.

The 13th instalment of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, sees heavy snow forcing the school to close as the heating system has broken down. Greg, now in middle school, isn’t allowed by his mum to be lazy and warm while playing video games. She packs him off outside to go and play with real people and not virtual ones.

Well, the only way kids, especially those like Greg, socialise is to gang up and fight. And that’s what they do when kids living at the high end of the neighbourhood don’t let those who live down the hill come up to their ‘territory’ to sled. When snow fights start, the snow forts, complete with flags flying high, come up to offer safer positions and its war games of the kind never seen before start.

There are safety patrol girls who want to make sure there are no snowball fights after a kid gets hurt, while Greg’s father joins in to help the kids plan a battle strategy for snowball fights.

All the madness in the snow actually ends up serving the purpose that Greg’s mum desired as it made the kids get together to plan, negotiate, strategise, cooperate and have fun in the good old fashioned way.

One of the things that makes The Meltdown better than the last book I read in the series is that there are many characters, some new and some old, who add to the interest of the reader as too much of Greg and his family becomes an over doze.

Greg is as weird as he has always been, there are many hilarious situations but thankfully devoid of toilet humour, and the action is fast-paced that makes the book a page-turner. The illustrations, like always, are pen drawings in the classic Wimpy Kid series style.

Available at Paramount Books

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 15th, 2018