You remember how hard primary school was? Navigating the minefield that is friendships, fashion and growing pains. Enter our antihero, Greg Heffley. Mischievous, lazy, paranoid, arrogant and dishonest. Not the sharpest knife in the block, he receives bad grades, gets bullied and deals with the same hardships every other kid does.
This year, Greg is on a mission to find a new best friend and it’s not going to be easy. Making it even harder is Greg’s family life which is currently in flux. His mother has gone back to school and extended family gatherings just add to the drama.
Writer and cartoonist Jeff Kinney – who created Diary of a Wimpy Kid and its sequels – was named one of the World's Most Influential People by Time magazine in 2009.
Kinney believes his best-selling book series is so extremely popular with children because they relate to a kid who’s not living up to his potential: ‘[Greg] is bright but a bit lazy. Kids like to read about somebody who is having it a little bit worse than they are. They feel like they are in on the joke’.
Narrator Ramon de Campo has a deadpan voice that perfectly suits Greg’s outrageous running commentary and angst-filled point of view. Campo also has a knack for nailing Dad’s sarcastic observations.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid first appeared on the website FunBrain in 2004. The story became an instant hit and in 2007 it was published in book form.
With over a dozen books in the Wimpy Kid series, four have been made into feature films. Esteemed movie critic Roger Ebert described the original 2010 film version as ‘nimble, bright and funny’: ‘It doesn't dumb down. It doesn't patronise. It knows something about human nature.’
Diary of a Wimpy Kid won the Blue Peter Book Award in 2012. The series has sold more than 200 million copies around the world and been translated into 56 languages.
