Jeff Kinney, author of the hugely popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid books – and one of Time magazine's top 100 most influential people – tells Nick McGrath why his stories resonate around the world
The parallels between unassuming middle child Jeff Kinney and his star-crossed fictional anti-hero Greg Heffley are too arresting to ignore. With his preppy shirts, earnest, toothy grin and diffident manner, Kinney – a 41-year-old father of two and self-confessed former computer games addict – was probably never picked first for the school football team.
Heffley, a luckless video games fanatic frozen in cartoon time as the simplistically drawn adolescent protagonist of Kinney's phenomenally popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, is similarly flawed and – however hard he tries – rarely penetrates beyond the outer fringes of the in-crowd.
Belittled by his cooler, tougher elder brother Rodrick, frustrated by his mollycoddled younger brother Manny and ignored by the class catch Holly Hills – all under the watchful eye of his well-intentioned mother and ineffectual father – he is stuck in an eternal battle for recognition in a world full of more significant, less gauche rivals.
"My books wouldn't have existed without the upbringing I had or without the family that I have," concedes Kinney on the eve of the publication of the seventh book of the series, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel.
"I had a very normal, very typical American childhood. My father worked for the government at the Pentagon and my mother was an educator, so we had a very average upbringing but that's helped me in my writing because I'm writing about ordinary things.
"I had an older brother, an older sister and a younger brother, and though I look back fondly on my childhood I think that when you've got four siblings sharing the same resources and a single kids' bathroom, it's going to get a little tense at times. "I was the odd man out with my siblings and maybe I brought that on myself. I liked to think that I was smart and I think I needled my brothers and sisters, so we had two camps.
"The conflicts tended to be me against the three of them. My younger brother was the new cute one and my two older siblings were the teens, so I was somewhere stuck in the middle.
"I never thought of myself as an attention-seeker but I probably was pretty jealous that my younger brother got a lot of it. So, in a way, all the experiences are somehow related to my own childhood and I would say that the DNA of my childhood appears in these books."
This universally recognisable family struggle, combined with the visually accessible, part comic strip, part diary style has so far produced worldwide sales of 75m books in 41 languages and the sixth book in the series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever, was the biggest and fastest-selling children's book of 2011.
"I used to think that the books were too American to work outside the US," says Kinney, who despite the books' massive success still works as creative director of an online games portal, Poptropica.com. "But these books aren't really about America. They're about a childhood, so that's why they work.
"A lot of characters in children's literature are heroes – Greg is not a hero. He's full of imperfections, and having a flawed character is a little bit more interesting than having a character that always does the right thing.
"I've enjoyed lots of books where the character is heroic, but with the title alone I wanted to tell kids that Greg is not the most outstanding or admirable character. There is something a little bit different about him.
"The main theme is pre-adolescent angst. I wanted to write about a time in people's life where there's a physical mismatch between kids. Kids come in all shapes and sizes, especially in this time period, and that plays itself out in the social interaction. I just thought this time period was really ripe for comedy.
"People ask me, 'Is Greg really you?' and I say that Greg is smarter than I was as a kid in some ways, and maybe less smart in others. But I think that growing up, nobody would want to have those years recorded, and that's what's happening to Greg and he doesn't come out looking so good."
So was Kinney's own adolescence as excruciating as Greg's?
"It was scary for me, and that middle school time between primary school and secondary school is by its very nature a short time that almost feels like a quarantine, and it felt like a scary place to me; from the safety of primary school to the really wide-open, prison-yard feel of middle school."
The storyline in the first book follows Greg's attempts to elevate his lowly status by launching his own middle school cartoon strip; a narrative mirrored by Kinney's own professional development.
"In middle school, I started to draw and my pencil sketches were huge. They were these 4ft by 3ft drawings and I got a lot of attention for that, so that was very validating. But I didn't start cartooning until I was in college.
"I worked for about three years trying to get my college cartoon syndicated, and I failed in that endeavour. I realised that the problem was that I couldn't draw well enough. My drawings weren't professional grade so I decided to come up with this character who wrote and drew his own journal entry, Greg Heffley, and that's where Diary of a Wimpy Kid was born. I worked on the books for about eight years in total before a publisher showed some interest."
The books have been made into three films, which have collectively made £125m globally.
The irony of cultivating international success from parochial failure isn't lost on Kinney. Recognition has created its own challenges, most notably for his own family; having to promote his work means time spent with his wife, Julia, and their two sons, Will, 10, and Grant seven, is more precious than ever. "It's been a developmental process for all of us. There's been extraordinary strain placed on my own family and myself for all the travel and work that comes with this, but there are also opportunities now that didn't exist before.
"We've met three US presidents including, Bush and Obama, and been on movie sets, but the nice thing is, we live in a town called Plainville, Massachusetts. It's a small town of about 8,000 people and it's actually really easy to be in small-town mode. That's our real life and all of this is just kind of make-believe.
He is at his happiest when he gets home after a working trip: "When I can have just those ordinary experiences and those days with my family where there aren't any other obligations. The best way to write the books is to just live my life normally. I'm a cub master in the cub scouts and I coach my kids' sports teams, and that's when the ideas flow.
There are plus sides for his family too, including major playground kudos for his sons. "They've enjoyed being able to brag about going to Vancouver and being on the movie set," admits Kinney grudgingly, "but it's not a big part of their day-to-day life. And my older one's breezed past my books now anyway. He moved from Captain Underpants to Harry Potter and then the Percy Jackson books so he graduated past my stuff very quickly."
Kinney's books have also become an unlikely spark in igniting reading interest among book-shy pre-teen boys, an achievement recognised by his place in Time magazine 2009 top 100 influential people poll.
"I wasn't trying to turn kids into readers or anything like that," says Kinney, audibly blushing at the compliment. "I was just aspiring to entertain, so if kids walked away with a laugh then that was mission accomplished for me.
"When I found out about the Time magazine thing, I thought someone was playing a practical joke on me, especially as at the time I only had three books out, but I think that the point they were trying to make was that my books were turning a lot of kids into readers. I like playing that part in kids' lives."
So what does the future hold for Kinney and his two-dimensional alter ego, Greg Heffley?
For Kinney, a JK Rowling-like genre shift into adult fiction is not an option. "I've learned to accept that I'm a children's writer, even if it's not what I set out to become. It's what I should have been all along and I'll stay in this role as long as I'm a writer.
"I'd like to come up with another series and I'd like to think that I'm capable of creating more than one thing."
And Greg? "There's plenty more Wimpy Kids to come, so I think Greg will be forever frozen in pre-adolescent anguish."
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel is published by Puffin, £12.99. To order a copy for £10.39, including free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days is out on Blu-ray and DVD
There will be a Wimpy Kid Fun Zone (including signing opportunities with Jeff) raising money for Save the Children in Westfield, Shepherd's Bush, London from 12 – 6pm on Sunday 2 December. Tickets available from WHSmith, Westfield
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/01/diary-wimpy-kid-jeff-kinney
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