Author of the week: Jeff Kinney

last updated 8 January 2015

The author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid picture books misjudged his audience, said Tara Parker-Pope in The New York Times. When “failed cartoonist” Jeff Kinney started drawing the stick-thin middle-schooler who became the books’ lazy, morally suspect protagonist, he imagined that the character’s wry take on childhood misadventures would mostly entertain adults. Four books and nearly 30 million copies later, the 38-year-old father of two has become a hero to the grammar school set. Parents often tell him that the Wimpy Kid books have turned their 7- to 11-year-old sons into readers, and he hears surprisingly few complain that the title character, Greg Heffley, makes a poor role model. “I have complete respect for that position,” he says. “I’ve been shocked there hasn’t been more of it.”

Kinney’s success didn’t come overnight, said Mark Gross in the Baltimore Sun. Though the new Wimpy Kid book, Dog Days, arrives only two years after word of mouth pushed the debut volume onto best-seller lists, Kinney created his first Wimpy Kid diary entries way back in 1998. “I spent a number of years,” he says, “trying to remember what it was like to be a kid.” Having now found the key, Kinney intends to continue the series for a couple more years. After that, well—he still holds his day job as a Web designer. Growing old with Greg Heffley isn’t in his plans. “There’s something creepy,” he says, “about a 60-year-old writing books from the perspective of