Jeff Kinney

Jeff Kinney

Jeff Kinney is an accidental children’s book writer and author of the best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.
Get your free audiobook
Automatically renews at AUD $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Jeff Kinney never set out to become a children’s author. Growing up Kinney wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist, and when he came to writing, he had intended to write a nostalgic coming of age story for an adult audience. However, when Kinney took the manuscript of his Wimpy Kid books to his publishers, they told him that what he had actually written was a children’s book series.

Kinney first came up for the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid in 1998 – for six years Kinney worked on the story before beginning to publish it online in daily installments. In 2006 Kinney signed a book deal and the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book was published a year later in 2007. Since then, Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid books have become bestsellers, with more than 180 million copies of the series in print around the world. The books are available in 52 languages.

Kinney is married to Julie, together they have two sons, and live in Plainville, Massachusetts. In 2015 the Kinneys opened a bookstore – An Unlikely Story – in their adopted hometown of Plainville.

Kinney was born on 19 February 1971 on an Air Force base in Maryland, United States. He spent his childhood in the Washington DC area, and studied criminal justice and computer science at the University of Maryland. In 1995 Kinney moved to the New England region where he lives with his family.
The popular Wimpy Kid children’s short stories are available now as audiobooks for kids – listen to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid audiobooks performed by American actor Ramon De Ocampo – these audiobooks for children are perfect for keeping kids entertained on holidays and during car trips.

Several books from the best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series have been adapted for film. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies include Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010), Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011), Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012), and The Long Haul (2017).

The Wimpy Kid books have earned Kinney numerous book awards including six Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards for Favorite Book, two Children’s Choice Book Awards, and was noted by NPR among the children’s books that are good for a laugh in its ‘Ultimate Backseat Bookshelf’ list of 100 Must-Reads for Kids. In 2009 TIME magazine named Kinney in its list of The World’s Most Influential People.

Audiobook Review — Guys Read: Funny Business, featuring Jeff Kinney