The Wimp Who Conquered The World

 
Just an ordinary 12-year-old boy – not even a very admirable one – Greg Heffley has somehow become the $500m kid. The simple line-drawn star of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has made his author, Jeff Kinney, £11m and is the basis of a global empire of books, film adaptations and merchandise worth in excess of half a billion dollars (£325m).

In an era when, thanks to the rise of the Kindle and the ebook, traditional book sales are in decline (Kinney’s UK publisher, Penguin chief executive John Makinson, warned of “dark clouds” ahead for 2012) the series has sold almost five million copies in the UK alone. In the US sales are closer to 50 million.

Figures just released show that the sixth title in the series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever, was the fastest selling book in the UK in 2011, shifting 81,656 copies in the first week. That’s more than the latest from Jamie Oliver, Danielle Steel or Terry Pratchett – more, even, than the authorised biography of Steve Jobs, which came out just after the Apple guru’s death and sold 37,645 copies. At least three US presidents are fans (Obama was recently spotted buying the latest book and Kinney had dinner with both George Bushes) while in 2009 Time magazine declared Kinney one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“It’s been really unexpected,” says a still baffled Kinney, speaking to The Big Issue before a sold-out Wimpy Kid event in Edinburgh. “Especially the success in the UK. That’s been a very big surprise to me, because I thought the book felt exclusively American. I had written it off and thought the cultural differences were too big.”

Ironically, Kinney says the success of his very funny stories, which are half comic, half novel, may come from the fact that they were never supposed to be read by children at all. After failing as a newspaper cartoonist, he settled on writing about the everyday trials of the self-centred and inept Greg, as a nostalgia trip for adults.

Little did he realise that his well-observed tales of the battle to be cool in school, the agonies of being a middle child (with an evil older brother and an infuriating young one) and the politics of teenage friendships would prove to be vital reading for those still in the throes of those massive life changes.

“In my books I really try to limit the adult presence. I feel like a lot of books for kids tend to be moralistic but the only message of my books, in a sideways way, is that reading is fun. I try to keep heavy-handed messages out of it,” says Kinney.

“I think kids feel like this is a book that speaks to them because there isn’t an obvious, glaring message. Kids can sniff out when they’re being preached to, so I try not to do that in my books.”

Before he became the star of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid films – of which there have now been two, with a third on its way – 13-year-old Zachary Gordon says he was just your average fan of the books. From his experience, the stealth message in support of reading seems to be working. Boys are often painted as being too busy with their PS3s to pick up a paperback, but Gordon was immediately gripped. “I was kind of obsessed with the books at that time. I guess I was a little sad,” he laughs.

“The funny thing is, I told my mom I wanted to make my own movie about it before I even knew there was a movie being made.”
While clearly in thrall to Kinney, he disagrees a little with the writer’s argument that there’s no overt lesson in the books. He insists they helped get him through middle school (attended by children aged 11-14 in the States).

“It definitely gives you advice for middle school – that’s the main reason I loved it. I read it in fifth grade [when he was 10] and it’s like a survival guide,” Gordon recalls. “Jeff’s really changed a lot of lives.”

Gordon got into the book in the same way as so many kids: it was recommended to him by a friend. Though the series exceeded (admittedly low) expectations when it was first published, immediately hitting the lower reaches of the bestseller lists in the States, it was only after the playground buzz got going that it became the kind of phenomenon that publishing houses plan their release schedule around. It’s a series that gives them hope now that Harry Potter has hung up his wand.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid wasn’t something teachers were saying kids should read – it was something kids were telling each other they must read. The ability to relate is only part of it, though. Thanks to Greg’s bumbling – in many ways he’s like a miniature Larry David, or a modern-day Charlie Brown – the books are also side-splittingly funny.

This humour is among the qualities that have allowed the books to reach children who would normally find a novel intimidating. Internet forums abound with parents’ tales of dyslexic and autistic children who could never be persuaded to pick up a book until they got their hands on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Nicole Shipley, senior tutor at the Dyslexia Teaching Centre in London, says the books’ ability to raise a laugh is crucial. “The humour is very important,” she says. “I think with boys, humour is always very useful to get them reading. Especially if the jokes are about them.”
For dyslexic kids, the friendlier ‘handwritten’ font makes the book less threatening, too, she says, while the abundance of pictures means it doesn’t look so dense.

“We find the boys want to read them and they like them because it’s not all text,” she says of her pupils. “The picture format makes it easy to follow. They like the fact that it’s about a boy they can relate to – a boy at school who’s not having a great time.”

The pictures help for children with developmental disabilities, too, says Carol Povey, director of the Centre for Autism. “Many children on the autism spectrum are quite visual thinkers, so they often understand and analyse information better through visuals. So, obviously, pictures work quite well,” she explains.

The books also tap into some of the latest thinking on autism. ‘Social stories’ are a teaching tool developed by American autism expert Carol Gray. Such stories help children who have problems with social situations to understand common responses.

“They are often done in cartoons or drawings – they’re very simple but they help people to understand what’s likely to happen in a particular situation, how people are likely to behave,” adds Povey. “Some of the pictures in Diary of a Wimpy Kid work well in that way. The pictures in the book are describing quite amusing social situations that happen to children.”

As Gordon points out, it’s not just children with learning or developmental problems who might need a bit of help getting through those years at the beginning of adolescence – they’re some of the most awkward and painful moments anyone faces growing up.
This time of life can be “a dark comedy waiting to happen”, says Dr Harold Koplewicz, one of the US’s leading child and adolescent psychiatrists and the founding president of the Child Mind Institute.

“These are the years in which kids undergo extreme physical changes and become much more sophisticated socially,” he adds, “but they do it on wildly different timetables, so you have kids who look like Greg, Kinney’s wimpy kid, sitting in math class next to boys who look like men, and girls who have become women.”

“It’s a set-up for embarrassment and misunderstanding, not to speak of bullying and meanness. Kids at this age are trying to figure out who they are, and as a result are often shockingly intolerant of those who are different in even the most trivial ways. By not sugarcoating it, but making comedy out of it, Kinney makes kids feel recognised and understood. He also gives them a chance to laugh at themselves, which is always healthy.”

Although none of this was intentional, Kinney is clearly delighted to have happened upon a formula that reaches the places other kids’ fiction can’t. Now he’s aware of his position as a hero of the playground set, he takes his job seriously to show kids a mirror of themselves – in all their imperfect glory.

“Children’s books are often filled with child characters who are heroic or are really, in a way, miniature adults,” he says. “They’re not really deeply flawed and they seem a bit unrealistic to me.

“I’ve been hoping to create a universe where the characters seem more relatable or more imperfect. That’s the way most people are.”

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth is out now in paperback. To celebrate, Penguin is launching The Ultimate Wimpy Kid Election on www.wimpykidclub.co.uk to find fans’ favourite book in the series