Day 159: Drawing Greg with Jeff Kinney

Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney didn’t grow up wanting to be a children’s author. His dream was to become a newspaper cartoonist, but he wasn’t able to get his comic strips syndicated.

In 1998 Jeff came up with the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a story about a middle-school weakling named Greg Heffley. Jeff worked on his book for almost eight years before showing it to a publisher in New York.

Jeff Kinney was born in 1971 in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s. It was there that Jeff ran a comic strip called “Igdoof” in the campus newspaper, and he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist.

However, Jeff was not successful in getting his comic strip syndicated after college, and in 1998 he started writing down ideas for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which he hoped to turn into a book. Jeff worked on the book for six years before publishing it online on Funbrain.com in daily installments. To date, the online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has more than 80 million visits, and is typically read by more than 70,000 kids a day.

In 2006, Jeff signed a multi-book deal with publisher Harry N. Abrams, Inc. to turn Diary of a Wimpy Kid into a print series. The first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book was published in 2007 and became an instant bestseller. Just a year later, more than 100,000 copies were in print in the United States alone. With each subsequent book, in-print numbers continue to grow exponentially both in the U.S. and abroad. The ninth book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, sold more than 2 million copies in all formats around the world in its first week. There are more than 150 million copies of the series in print. 

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has been a fixture on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. The series has remained on the New York Times bestseller lists since the publication of the first book, for more than 400 weeks total, and more than 300 on the series list. The books are currently available in 51 editions in 45 languages.

Since publication, the series has gone on to win many regional and national awards around the globe including two Children’s Choice Book Awards and five Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards for Favorite Book.. Jeff Kinney was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the world. In addition, three movies based on the book series have grossed more than $250 million internationally. 

In 2007, Jeff also created Poptropica.com, where he continues to work full-time as the creative and editorial director.  The Wimpy Kid Island (Wimpy Wonderland) on poptropica.com, a virtual world for kids, remains one of the most visited on the site. Jeff lives in southern Massachusetts with his wife and two sons, where he is opening a bookstore.

Don't forget to visit the Wimpy Kid's website!