Jeff Kinney’s Fight or Flight, the 21st Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, debuted at No. 1 on Publishers Weekly’s Children’s Frontlist Fiction chart dated November 2, 2026. The chart recorded 165,984 print copies for the book in its debut week. Greg Heffley’s latest middle-school disaster also took the top spot on PW’s overall bestseller list.
Amulet Books published Fight or Flight on October 20. Its debut put three Kinney books on the same children’s chart, including a Rowley Jefferson spinoff and last year’s main-series installment.
Three Jeff Kinney books made the same bestseller list
| Rank | Book | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|
| No. 1 | Fight or Flight | Book 21 in Diary of a Wimpy Kid |
| No. 3 | Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories 2 | A spinoff starring Greg’s best friend |
| No. 14 | Partypooper | Book 20 in Diary of a Wimpy Kid |
The three entries tell different sales stories. Fight or Flight had just arrived. The Rowley collection, out since August, had sold about 107,000 print copies by the time of PW’s report. Partypooper had sold about 1.1 million print copies over a year. Readers were buying the new Greg book while the previous volume was still charting, and Rowley was drawing readers to a series of his own.
What is Fight or Flight about?
Greg has been keeping notes on the biggest bullies at his school. When the binder holding those notes falls into someone else’s hands, he has to scramble before people find out what he wrote. It’s a classic Greg Heffley setup. The habit that helps him make sense of middle school becomes the thing that could make his life there much harder.
Fight or Flight follows Partypooper in the main series and is available in hardcover, ebook and audiobook. For a reader choosing between the two new releases, Fight or Flight offers one school crisis to follow, while Spooky Stories 2 offers a collection of shorter stories with Rowley’s take on scary storytelling.
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- Ready for Greg’s next middle-school mess? Find Fight or Flight on Amazon.
- Catching up with the main series? Find Partypooper, Book 20, on Amazon.
- Prefer a collection you can dip into one story at a time? Find Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories 2on Amazon.
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