You’ve probably already seen the ‘Diary of A Wimpy Kid‘ movies, with all of the hilarious antics and funny and relatable characters making people LOL in the cinemas. The more hardcore fans of the series have surely finished all of the 10 illustrated books, which let fans in to Greg’s childhood and beyond. With the recent release of the eleventh installment of the book series, the brains behind this hit cult fave, author Jeff Kinney, flew all the way to Manila to meet his fans for his first-ever book signing!
Luckily, we were able to take sit down with Jeff for a few minutes during his Philippine tour. Here are 6 things you should know about him and his brainchild ‘Diary of A Wimpy Kid’!
6 Things You Need To Know About Jeff Kinney, Author of ‘Diary Of A Wimpy Kid’
6. He started our as a cartoonist on a newspaper.
“I spent a few years to become a cartoonist for a newspaper and it didn’t work out for me, so I decided to start writing and drawing like I did as a kid. As for the character Greg, I worked on that for eight years and when I was ready, I showed it to an editor and that got my writing career started.”
5. He likes Rowley better than Greg.
“I’m not emotionally attached to Greg. I think that I understand him because Greg is how I was as a kid. But I like the character Rowley, who is Greg’s bestfriend, because he likes being a kid. He is a pure kid, which I wish I was as a kid.”
4. He helps kids enjoy reading ‘Wimpy Kid’.
“I think that when you open the book and you see it looks like fun, it doesn’t look like work. You have these illustrations that spot the book. So, when a kid looks into that, they feel like they could get through the text and get an image as the reward. I think it’s very important for kids that they were young readers, that you string them along with drawings.”
3. He spends months thinking up jokes for his manuscripts.
“My writing process is: I spend around four to five months just writing jokes. The first thing that I did was I try to remember every funny thing that happened to me as a kid. I think using your own life as your source material is really smart because it’s unique to you and you know it really well. I start with that. Write about what you know and write about yourself.
Then I spend a month of writing a manuscript, and about another month, two and a half for the illustrations of the book.”
2. Wimpy Kid is a lesson-free book.
“I try to keep the book lesson-free because when an adult writes for a kid, they usually try to teach them some sort of a lesson. But if there’s a takeaway from the book, I hope it says reading is fun and there are a lot of books out there to like.”
1. He lives for passion.
“I think it’s really important to try to find a thing you’re passionate about because if you’re not passionate about your job, you’ll end up changing it to something else eventually. Find what you love as you become a young adult and try to remember that it’s important to have fun.”
Photographs by Lora Fornea of National Bookstore.
