Entertainment, Books - Air Force Times

‘Last Straw’ for a wimpy, popular kid

PLAINVILLE, Mass. — Greg Heffley, aka “The Wimpy Kid,” is a wisecracking, self-centered middle-schooler whose life is filled with suburban misadventures.

He has an oversized head, a prominent nose and three strands of hair.

No one knows exactly how old he is or where he lives, not even his not-so-wimpy creator, Jeff Kinney, 37, who lives at the end of a new cul-de-sac in this unassuming suburb south of Boston.

Greg is a cartoon character and the star of Kinney’s new book, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw.” (Abrams/Amulet, $14.50). The third book in the Wimpy Kid series, it will be released today with a first printing of 1 million.

That brings the series’ total, including a do-it-yourself workbook, to 11 million in print in the U.S., Kinney’s publisher says. The books have been translated into 28 languages.

The books are designed to look as if written and illustrated by Greg, the middle-schooler. The series began with little fanfare less than two years ago. Now there’s a movie in the works.

As an author, Kinney, who has kept his day job designing online games, is most popular among fifth-grade boys. But he also appeals to girls, parents, librarians and teachers. Grateful grown-ups say his series has taken the word “reluctant” out of “reluctant readers.”

“I didn’t start out by trying to turn non-readers into readers,” Kinney says as his sons, Will, 6, and Grant, 3, play on the living room floor. “It was sort of a lark. I’m not a strong writer of narrative fiction, but I can string jokes together. And I’m happy the books have become a gateway to legitimate reading.”

So are parents such as Judy Tygard of Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., whose son Jack, 10, was a reluctant reader, a label used by teachers for students who would rather do most anything other than sit still and read.

Then he discovered “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

“It is truly the first time where I couldn’t get Jack to ‘stop’ reading,” his mother says. “He stayed up late. He couldn’t wait to continue reading. It really showed him he could love books.”

Jack says he read the first book in three days, the second in one day. (Each is 217 pages.) He likes their “kid’s view of how annoying it can be to have an older sibling and how to survive in school. And they’re really funny.”

Greg’s diary entries complain about bullies when he’s not bullying others. He works harder on avoiding chores and homework than doing them.

“The Last Straw” opens with Greg’s entry on resolutions to make yourself a better person: “Well, the problem is, it’s not easy for me to think of ways to improve myself, because I’m already pretty much one of the best people I know.”

He’s sandwiched between older and younger brothers who cause all the problems (as he sees it). He has an enthusiastic mom he’s easily embarrassed by and a dad who’s frustrated Greg isn’t more of an athlete.

As Greg puts it, “I tried to explain how with video games, you can play sports like football and soccer, and you don’t even get all hot and sweaty. But as usual, Dad didn’t see my logic.”

Greg “isn’t a character to be emulated,” Kinney says. “But I think kids get that. They’re more sophisticated than we think. They laugh at Bart Simpson, but they know you’re not supposed to be like Bart Simpson.”

That quality appealed to Kinney’s editor, Charles Kochman, who calls their first meeting, a chance encounter at the 2006 Comic-Con convention, a “magical moment.”

Kinney’s 20-page book proposal, done in pencil, immediately “spoke to the 8-year-old in me,” says Kochman, 46. “This was the book I wish I’d had when I was a kid.”

Kochman loved the cover with Greg bent by an oversized backpack, “as if he had the weight of the world in it,” and that “Greg’s faults didn’t need to be redeemed.”

For the cover of the first book, its main color — burnt red — was chosen to match the cover of J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye,” which also has a discontented narrator, if older and more jaded.

“Greg is like Holden Caulfield,” Kochman says. “What he doesn’t like in others he’s guilty of himself. Kids recognize that. And when you identify with something, you can rise above it.”

Kinney’s humor is gentle, compared with the Cartoon Network. But some of Greg’s vocabulary — “morons,” “booger” and “farted” — isn’t on school spelling lists.

Greg uses words Kinney wouldn’t want to hear from his own kids, too young yet for his books. But “they’re just words the typical elementary- or middle-school kid uses. I wanted to make sure that Greg’s voice sounded authentic.”

The overriding joke, Kinney says, is that “Greg is a deeply flawed protagonist. I think adults who voice complaints about Greg’s shortcomings are missing the joke. Kids get that Greg isn’t perfect, and I think that’s why they like him.”

Greg’s misadventures are loosely based on Kinney’s childhood in suburban Maryland. His memories are mostly good, he says. He wasn’t as wimpy as Greg, “but I had my wimpy moments.”

He purposely left out details, like Greg’s age and hometown, as “extraneous information that could get in the way.” He says Greg is “probably in fifth or sixth grade” and “pre-sexual. He’s interested in girls but is a Lothario without a stinger. He wouldn’t know what to do even if he had the chance.”

Kinney became an author only after failing to become a syndicated cartoonist, his dream since he drew a popular comic strip for the student newspaper at the University of Maryland.

After graduation, he collected rejection letters and ended up working as an online designer for Funbrain.com, a Web site for kids, where he first posted Greg’s diary entries. He thought of a book as a way to get his cartoons published.

He first heard the term reluctant reader in letters from parents and teachers: “I thought, ‘What a curious turn of phrase.’ I was surprised so many people were coincidentally using those two words together.”

He has since learned “the reluctant-reader issue is huge, especially amongst boys. Reluctant readers are just kids who have so many entertainment options — the Internet, television, video games — they don’t see the value of reading.”

Recognizing the growing competition, schools and libraries are increasingly embracing comic books and graphic novels. (Kinney calls his “novels in cartoons.”)

Pat Scales, a middle-school librarian for 28 years in Greenville, S.C., and president of the Association for Library Service to Children, says Kinney’s series is “terrific at dealing with the everyday life of middle-schoolers in a funny way. Kids that age need humor in their lives.”

Kinney likes to laugh at himself. An hour into the interview, he interrupts himself: “I feel like a jerk talking about myself so much.”

He ducks a question on whether he’s rich. His book sales paid for a new and bigger house, with an office rather than a basement to write in. His wife, Julie, a former newspaper reporter, postponed plans to become a teacher and is staying home with their kids. Kinney has kept his job at Funbrain for a simple reason: “I love it.”

His first book was no overnight hit. After its release in April 2007, it took a month for it to enter USA Today’s extended best-seller list — at No. 391.

It steadily crept up the list all summer. That’s a sign it benefited not from media coverage, which triggers sudden surges in sales, but from word-of-mouth recommendations, one reader to another.

By the end of August 2007, “Wimpy Kid” was No. 81 on the list. By the time his second book, “Roderick Rules” (named for Greg’s older brother), was released a year ago, Kinney had a large core of fans.

The second book burst onto the list at No. 7; the first book jumped to No. 37. When all of 2008’s sales were tallied by USA Today’s Best-Selling Books list, Kinney held the Nos. 17 and 21 spots. (Greg, in contrast, describes himself as the “52nd or 53rd most popular” kid at his school.)

Only two other authors landed more than one book in the year’s top 25 best sellers: Barack Obama and Stephenie Meyer (for her teen vampire series, “Twilight”).

Like Meyer, Kinney may be getting some help from Hollywood.

Fox 2000 bought the movie rights to a live-action version of “Wimpy Kid.” Kinney is an executive producer, which means “I get to attend writers’ meetings and offer jokes they seem to like.”

It has not been cast yet. Kinney is most asked by his readers: “When will you make the next book?” (He’s committed to doing five and may do seven “if I can keep the quality.”)

He hopes to publish the fourth book, as yet untitled, this fall. As he puts it, “To say ‘next year’ (to fans) isn’t an acceptable answer.”