History Literature / DearDumbDiary

* ContrivedClumsiness: In ''Never Underestimate Your Dumbness'', to get out of wearing painful wooden clogs at Aunt Carol's wedding, Isabella trips down the stairs while wearing them and then starts to scream and cry in pain, while Angeline "confirms" that it was the clogs that made her fall. Jamie doesn't even know it was faked until she hears Isabella laughing maniacally ten minutes later.

* AnimalMotifs: Jamie's classmate Margaret is compared to a beaver, due to her obsession with chewing pencils.

* OffModel: A lot of the drawings. Justified as they're meant to be the doodles of a 12-13 year old girl.

* LethalChef:
** Jamie's mother (except when she's making hors d'œuvres). The meat loaf she makes is even worse than the school's meat loaf that students complain about on weekly basis.
** Isabella's mother is notably the only one to subvert this, as Jamie says her meat loaf is so delicious, it's probably a cow's second wish to become said meat loaf. (The first wish, of course, is to stay alive as a cow.)

* HurricaneOfPuns: In ''Am I the Princess or the Frog?,'' Jamie learns that when Angeline was little, everyone used to laugh at her because her hair looked horrible, because her mom didn't know how to style her hair, so she had to learn how to do it herself. She has an ImagineSpot of little Angeline looking up how to style hair, surrounded by books with titles like "Curl Up and Dye", "To Bleach His Own", "Hair We Go Again", and "Grin and Barrette".

* {{Countrystan}}: Jamie often uses the phrase "Wheretheheckistan" to refer to hypothetical far away places. The first usage is when her mother suggests children in poor countries would be grateful to eat [[LethalChef her cooking,]] and Jamie remarks, "The kids in Wheretheheckistan have enough problems without dumping Mom's meatloaf on them."

* FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence: Angeline's mere presence drives Jamie nuts just because she's so unbelievably beautiful and perfect. One illustration has five identical drawings of Angeline smiling, with individual captions under each one reading "Angeline making me mad", "Angeline making me enraged", "Angeline making me mental", "Angeline making me bananas", and "Angeline making me have rabies".

* TheUnsmile: When Jamie is really happy in science class, she briefly smiles at Mike Pinsetti. He tries to smile back, but it looks more like "he has his hand caught in a car door". The illustration shows his face contorting painfully and his eyeballs moving out of place, complete with the [[UnsoundEffect Unsound Effects]] "strain" and "throb".

* AllNaturalSnakeOil: Subverted in that Jamie's not trying to scam people, but in ''The Worst Things in Life Are Also Free'', she slaps the adjective "vegetarian" (something she's entertaining being) on all of her friends' enterprises to make them sound more virtuous and appealing...even when vegetarianism has absolutely nothing to do with their services.

* NoNameGiven: Downplayed, but of the main trio of girls, Angeline is the only one whose last name we never learn. Likely deliberate given Jamie's initial distance from her and reluctant friendship later on.

* TheFilmOfTheBook: ''Dear Dumb Diary'' received a 2013 film adaptation. The bad part? It was a MadeForTVMovie on the Hallmark Channel. The worse part? It was [[TheMusical a musical]].

In 2013, there was a [[TheMusical musical]] film adaptation of the series made for TV, premiering on Hallmark Channel and subsequently available briefly on streaming services like Creator/{{Netflix}}. Co-written by Benton, the film's plot adopts elements from various books in the series

''Dear Dumb Diary'' is a series of [[ChildrensLiterature children's books]] written by Creator/JimBenton ([[HeAlsoDid also known as]] the guy who created ''Advertising/ItsHappyBunny'' and ''Literature/FrannyKStein''). [[ATrueStoryInMyUniverse The books are presented as the diaries]] of Jamie Kelly, a middle-school girl with [[NightmareFuelStationAttendant a very interesting view of the world]].

The books, in a nutshell, are a mixture of {{plan}}s, strange events and humour just sailing on RuleOfFunny, and frequent {{deconstruction}}s and [[AffectionateParody parodies]] of common SchoolTropes. The main characters [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist Jamie]], [[HeroicComedicSociopath Isabella]], and [[ParodySue Angeline]] spend their seventh grade year getting into [[HilarityEnsues wacky situations]], whether it be (supposedly) haunted pants, student-teacher creepy crushes, money-raising schemes or teacher's relationships, often at the hands of a plot built by Isabella. In the end, Jamie learns a valuable lesson [[SubvertedTrope (though it may not be the one you'd expect)]].

As of the 10th book, Jamie has now finished her [[ComicBookTime six years of the seventh grade]].

In 2013, there was a [[TheMusical musical]] film adaptation of the series made for TV, premiering on Hallmark Channel.

* CrocodileTears: According to Jamie, Isabella's pretend crying is better than most people's ''real'' crying.

* MindControl: In two books, some way to control people's emotions and attitudes through scents is plot-significant, and seems to go a bit beyond Jamie's fertile imagination. A common early example ''of'' Jamie's imagination is her momentarily falling under Angeline's "evil spells", with descriptions almost bordering on self-FoeYay.

** Isabella is less of the schemer she is in later books, and is more frequently drawn with translucent glasses.

* {{Diary}}: Well, duh.

''Dear Dumb Diary'' is a series of [[ChildrensLiterature children's books]] written by Creator/JimBenton ([[HeAlsoDid also known as]] the guy who created ''Advertising/ItsHappyBunny''). [[ATrueStoryInMyUniverse The books are presented as the diaries]] of Jamie Kelly, a middle-school girl with [[NightmareFuelStationAttendant a very interesting view of the world]].

* HurricaneOfPuns: In ''Am I the Princess or the Frog?,'' Jamie has an ImagineSpot of little Angeline looking up how to style hair, surrounded by books with titles like "Curl Up and Dye", "To Bleach His Own", "Hair We Go Again", and "Grin and Barrette".