The Last Straw is the third book in Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, published by Amulet Books in January 2009. Like the rest of the series it is an illustrated novel rather than a graphic novel: Greg Heffley narrates his year in dated journal entries, with Kinney's black-and-white line drawings running throughout.
The book opens on New Year's Day and quickly becomes a contest of wills between Greg and his father. Frank Heffley has concluded that his middle son needs toughening up, and sets about it through intramural soccer, the Boy Scouts and a series of character-building projects — none of which survive contact with Greg. Behind all of it sits the threat of Spag Union Military Academy, where the neighbourhood's own cautionary example, Lenwood Heath, has already been sent. Greg meanwhile is preoccupied with a rezoned bus route that now leaves him walking to school, with his brother Rodrick, with his best friend Rowley Jefferson, and above all with the problem of getting Holly Hills to notice him.
Aimed at readers aged eight to twelve, it is the last Wimpy Kid book published before the series reached the screen, and the one that puts Greg's relationship with his father at the centre rather than at the edges.
