Five minutes with... Jeff Kinney

24 April 2012

We caught up with the author of the bestselling author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid , winner of Blue Peter's Best Book of the Last 10 Years.

What was your inspiration for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was borne of my failure to become a newspaper cartoonist. I couldn't break into the business because I couldn't draw at a professional level. Eventually, I embraced the fact that I drew like a kid and decided to make it seem like I was doing it on purpose by writing from the perspective of a pre-teen.

What do you think makes the books so hugely popular with young readers?

I think kids respond to the humor and the drawings. My books don't seem like work; they seem like fun. Reading should be fun for a kid.

Tell us a bit about your process of creating the Wimpy Kid books.

I spend a few months trying to come up with ideas. I throw a blanket over my head and try not to fall asleep writing gags. I average one or two jokes every four hours. I write a manuscript in about two weeks, and then draw for about three months.

Are there any authors or illustrators who have particularly influenced you?

My favorite writer of all time is Carl Barks, who wrote about Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie.

What’s next for Greg – and for you?

I still feel like I have more stories to tell in the Wimpy universe. I have a full-time job at Poptropica.com, and I'm doing a lot of work in the movie world!

And finally, which book would you choose as your Best Children’s Book of the Last 10 Years?

Anything with 'Harry Potter' in the title.

Find out more about Blue Peter's Best Children's Book of the Last 10 Years

Test your knowledge of Diary of a Wimpy Kidand the other books on the Best Children's Book of the Last 10 Years shortlist with our quiz

Jeff Kinney

Jeff Kinney was born in 1971 in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s. It was there that he ran a comic strip called ‘lgdoof’ in the campus newspaper and where he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist. After failed attempts to gain work as a professional cartoonist, he landed a job as a web developer for Pearson Education and has since worked on the massively popular virtual world of Pop Tropica and the very successful educational website Funbrain.com.

Jeff spent six years writing the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which he then published in daily instalments on Funbrain.com. Publisher Abrams in the US, noticing the phenomenal popularity of the cartoons, then published it in book form turning Jeff’s long-held dream into a reality. In 2009, Jeff Kinney was voted one of TIME magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People. Jeff lives with his family in southern Massachusetts, USA.