The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of books has been a huge hit ever since its first novel was released in 2007. Following the suburban misadventures and middle school trials of the young schemer Greg Heffley, author Jeff Kinney's best-selling stories have struck a chord with young readers that continues strong to this day -- with a whopping 15 novels in the series.

2021 is shaping up to be a great year for Wimpy Kid fans. For one, the 16th book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot, is releasing in October, backed by a unique Drive-Thru Book Tour where fans can meet Jeff Kinney in a pandemic-safe environment. Also, a new Disney+ animated movie will debut in December, along with a tie-in book perfect for series newcomers. CBR sat down with Kinney to discuss everything going on in the Wimpy world in 2021, including what fans can expect from the Drive-Thru Tour, Big Shot, and more.

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Diary Of A Wimpy Kid By Jeff Kinney

CBR: There have been Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies before, but with the new film taking a different approach, is there anything you're particularly excited about?

Jeff Kinney: I'm really excited because this movie feels like the books come to life. It feels like the Greg of the books coming to life in that he looks on the screen the way he does on the page. So that's fun, and I think it will make Greg's world feel really authentic. It will really feel like the Wimpy world. I'm excited about that. We had a lot of fun with the [older] movies and I love those movies, but it was also really fun to bring Greg Heffley the cartoon character to life in a different way.

You have a producing and writing credit on the film -- what was your experience writing a Wimpy Kid film versus writing a Wimpy Kid book?

]I really love screenwriting -- and it took me a long time to get good at it, maybe about seven years. So, if I had been asked to be the screenwriter of the original Wimpy Kid movies, I definitely couldn't have done it back then. But I learned a lot by being on-set and being in all of those producers' meetings. So when this opportunity came up, I was finally ready and it was really fun.

I think when you're screenwriting, you're really writing at the speed of thought. So dialogue just pours out of you and onto the page. Whereas, when I write my Wimpy Kid books, it's really hard for me. With my current book [Big Shot], I think I took 10 days on the first sentence. [With a book] that can happen, but screenwriting is really different. It's really fluid.

It's interesting that you say it can be such a slog because you have 16 books now!

Yeah. It's sad. [laughs] I've been doing this for such a long time and it's still not so easy. Sometimes, the pages flow, but not very often at all.

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Despite your challenges writing them, when I read Greg's misadventures as a kid, I could relate to, not Greg as a person per se, but to his situations and his feelings towards the people around him in a way that felt natural. How are you able to get Greg to be a guy where kids can feel themselves in his situations?

I think something changed with me over the years. I used to think I was writing about this kid, Greg Heffley, and his family. I realized -- by traveling around the world and seeing how kids embrace Greg and the stories and situations he was living through -- I was really writing about childhood in general. That really influenced the way that I write my books.

I don't want to write about an American kid or a kid who lives in a specific time and place. I want to write about every kid's situation as much as I can. Then, of course, it's all filtered through this character who's a really imperfect kid, which adds some humor to the situation, but hopefully, some kid in Turkey or New Zealand, or Brazil can read these books and feel like Greg could be them.

How did you bring that kid-centric approach to writing Big Shot?

I've been wanting to write a sports book for a really long time, but I've always known that, as soon as you put a picture of a ball on the cover of a book, that makes it a sports book. Then that turns off a lot of kids who don't play sports or don't love sports. Then the other thing is that, once you put a certain type of ball on the cover, then the book is specific to that sport and then it alienates kids who don't play that specific sport. So I sort of solved that by putting lots of balls and sports equipment on the cover to send the message that, "This is just the sports book."

So that was part one of cracking that, and the other thing I did in this book is I wrote about Greg's experiences in lots of different sports and his take on the Olympics and, even though the book has a basketball focus, I think that most of the situations in the book are relatable to kids. I had a lot of fun writing about what it's like to play sports for a non-sporty kid.

Would your choice of basketball as one of the book's main focuses have anything to do with your own love for the Boston Celtics? I hear you're quite the fan.

Yeah. I'm a Celtics fan, but also, [both of] my boys played basketball. My older son just went to college, so his basketball career is over, but my younger son is still in high school and he still plays. But my wife and I have really lived that basketball life, that AAU kind of life, and the boys both played year-round. We've seen it all and we've been in every dimly lit gym in the state of Massachusetts. It was really fun to draw from those experiences in a really authentic way.

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You also have an upcoming Drive-Thru Tour for Big Shot, and you might be one of the only authors doing a book tour like this, period. What are you expecting that to be like?

Believe it or not, this is going to be our fourth physical tour since the pandemic started. In the early days of the pandemic, I realized that every kid was going to be on their screens for a really long time. So we wanted to figure out something physical that we could do that was still safe. It started off with me in a van with a long pole and I'd hand kids their books through the car window.

That's really evolved to the point that we've created these experiences [like] the Big Shot tour, which is going to be this drive-thru experience where there are various basketball-related activities and a lot of atmosphere and crowd noise and paparazzi taking pictures and things like that. We're trying to make it as fun as possible for kids who are in their cars and don't get the opportunity to do something physical.

We're also doing this thing called, "Books and Basketballs," where we're visiting different Boys & Girls Clubs on our tour route and we're going to surprise them with the new book and tickets to a professional basketball game. That's in the planning phases right now, but it'll be fun because we'll send a lot of kids to games who might not have the chance to go otherwise.

What do you think is the most exciting aspect of the Drive-Thru tour?

I think the most exciting thing is seeing the faces of kids and making that connection, I think for selfish reasons, this tour is really important to me. When I write these books, I write them in isolation and it's important to kind of close that loop. The moment where you hand a kid their book is really important because it makes you feel like you accomplished something -- it's reaching a reader. I think that for myself and for the people I work with, it's really important to see the faces and to be able to deliver the goods.

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The film has a tie-in book as well - what can you tell us about that?

Well, the tie-in is actually a recovering of the first book, but it's got the Disney characters on it, and, on the back, there's an image of Greg's feet standing next to the cheese. It's a fun way of celebrating that first book. We know that we're introducing this series to a whole new generation of readers, so this felt like a way to kind of make a fun statement.

Wimpy Kid began what feels like ages ago now, back in 2007, and it's still going. How do you feel about being able to write something with such staying power?

It feels really exciting. I've been doing this for -- how many years has it been since 2007? 14 years. It's really cool to have something that's so enduring and the kids who first read my books are now going out to their first jobs as adults. It's really cool that there's always a new generation of kids reading these books. I really hope that goes on for a while and I hope one day the kids who first read my books, introduce them to their kids. That's a real privilege as a writer.

What is your personal favorite Wimpy Kid book?

I think the first one's always going to be the most special. It had things like the Cheese Touch -- some things that became really memorable for fans. But this new one that I wrote, Big Shot, I think is the best, from a plot and structure and narrative point of view. I'm really excited for this one to get out into the world, the people who have read it said that they think it's the best, so that's really exciting.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot releases Oct. 26.

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