‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ author Jeff Kinney on writing children’s books with adults in mind

Author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney worked on a draft of Diary of a Wimpy Kid for nearly eight years before showing the story to a publisher. Now, more than a decade after middle-schooler Greg Heffley’s first “diary” was published in print, Kinney’s releasing its 14th installment, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball, on November 5.

Kinney’s Wrecking Ball Show stops at UMSL’s Touhill Performing Arts Center at 7 p.m. on November 12 to give fans a chance to build their own cartoons, “destroy the trivia competition, manufacture some dance moves, and collapse with laughter.” Solo tickets are $20. Family tickets are $30 and include an entry for two. Both solo and family tickets include a copy of the book, a pre-personalized bookplate signed by Kinney, and a photo with the author.

Here, Kinney tells SLM about his early years as an author and how he spends his time when he’s not writing, drawing, or meeting fans around the world.

You’re a best-selling author setting out on tour for your latest book. But you and your wife also own a bookstore, An Unlikely Story. How did that come about? It’s funny. I think it was civic pride that inspired us to do it. I live in a little town called Plainville, Massachusetts. The old store that sat in the middle was really a rotting husk from a bygone era. It served as a symbol of the town and it wasn’t a good look. We built it from the ground up about four years ago. We bought the building, first built in 1856, so it had gone through quite a bit of wear and tear. We took it over, took it down, and built it back up, mostly out of old wood that we sourced from other places.

The first step was to build a really nice building that represented the town well. The next step was to decide what to fill it with. My wife and I decided a bookstore was the best fit. So, it really had nothing to do with the fact [that] I am an author. We were just looking for something that would serve the whole community. I’ve gotten to visit hundreds of bookstores around the world, so I was really able to take the best of what I’d seen and experienced on my travels and apply it to this store we built. I think the bookstore has been a real beacon for the community and the region. We get the world’s best authors to come to our town. 

So you own an independent bookstore and your Diary of a Wimpy Kid books have sold more than 200 million copies and been translated into 61 languages. The first book was originally published in installments on Funbrain.com, and your latest book launch included a big social media component. How does that all fit together? I live in these two worlds, the digital and the analog world. It the time I was writing Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I was working on a website called Poptropica, which was a massive multiplayer game in an online world. To me, it was very similar to trying to write a book because I was trying to create something that would hopefully reach millions of kids through storytelling. The vehicle really wasn’t that important to me, it was the storytelling itself. In a sense, it’s all the same. Whether it’s on the screen or on the page, it’s all about the story.

But I also think it’s really important to put a physical book into the hands of a kid. We know ostensibly, as parents, that a book is a much better gift than, say, a digital download. It’s something very tangible that kids can really connect to.  I also think a book is a terrific piece of technology. You can share it. You don’t need to charge it. You can find your place in the story very easily You can fast forward, rewind, and relive your favorite moments in a way that’s a lot easier than anything technology provides.

On the other side of things, it’s really hard for an author to amass a large following of readers without a big social media presence, so you always have to tend that garden as well. But my heart is really in the books. It’s not so much in the social media platforms

You worked on Diary of a Wimpy Kid for several years before taking it to a publisher. Why? I felt like, when I came up with the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, it was probably going to be the only great idea I’d ever have, so I wanted to make sure I took my time with it. I wanted to make sure I mastered it, and I wanted to develop the characters so that, when I finally did show it to somebody, it felt like a complete world.

It took me four years just to write the jokes which, at the time, was mostly just remembering and writing down things that had happened to me as a kid, then another four years to write the manuscript. It was a very big first draft—1,300 pages long—so, I didn’t want to rush it.

I was also afraid that I was going to be rejected, so I wanted to put off the inevitable. I felt like it was my opus. It was either going to work or it wasn’t, so I didn’t want to work on it for just a few months. I wanted to really get good at it.

You’ve made each of the Wimpy Kid books 217 pages long. Why? I wanted the books all to look the same on a kid’s bookshelf, so that’s motivated me to keep the books the same length. And it feels like the right length for stories like these. It’s also like a puzzle. I’m always trying to cut things or expand on ideas to fit that puzzle perfectly.

Your sons were very small when Diary of a Wimpy Kid was published in 2007. Now they are teens. Did you have in mind that your own kids would be part of the audience for your books someday? I didn’t, really. I’ve always had this imaginary adult audience in mind for my books. When I wrote the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I was writing a nostalgia piece, something that a grown-up might read and see themselves in the characters or they might read something that would spark memories. So, when my publisher decided the manuscript I’d written would make a good children’s book series, that was a really big shock to me at the time. And, still, when I’m writing, I’m not thinking about kids, I’m thinking about adults.

So did you ever expect them to be so appealing to kids, even those who might otherwise be reluctant readers? I think that’s a wonderful byproduct of these books, that they turn kids on the reading and they excite reluctant readers. I never set out to do that. My goal was to make people laugh. But it’s really wonderful and validating that kids who might not be turned on by books are reading mine and other books like mine.

Wrecking Ball is the 14th Wimpy Kid book and you have written a few related books, including one that showcases Greg Heffley’s best friend Rowley. Are you surprised at the longstanding appeal of the characters? I have been surprised. Back when my publisher told me they wanted to do three books, that felt like a really big number. Now we’re 14 books in and I never could have imagined this. I’d like to get to at least 20 and then decide where it goes from there. But I think that’s what it’s really special about cartoons and cartoon characters. They can go on forever and, in fact, people don’t want their stories to end.

I think the reason kids like the series is that they can see themselves in the characters and the situations are ordinary. I’m writing in the same vein as Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary, who wrote about ordinary situations—neighborhood stories. I’m just doing that, but with cartoons.