Diary of a Wimpy Kid author and illustrator Jeff Kinney crosses his fingers and hopes kids know who he is when he walks out on stage.
Columbus City Schools third through fifth grade students at Oakland Park Alternative Elementary knew who he was. They almost broke out into a riot when he walked on stage during a surprise visit to their school, and the excitement and applause didn't end until he left the stage after gifting $1,000 in library books to the school, including copies of his newest book released Oct. 20.
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series follows middle schooler Greg Heffley and a cast of characters as they navigate the highs and lows of the school experience. The books are formatted like a diary entries, featuring distinctive, hand-drawn
cartoons alongside the text of the book. The first book in the series was published in 2007 and led to nearly two dozen books in the main series alongside spin-offs and movies. Today, more than 300 million copies have been sold globally.
"My books have been out there for almost 20 years I can't believe that new readers keep showing up," Kinney said. "This is maybe the third or fourth generation of kids that have read my books and I hope it never ends and I hope as I get older I don't lose touch with kids."
Kinney visited Oakland Park to help celebrate the school's achievement of having the most books checked out from the school library in the region. Oakland Park Principal Mark Caudill said the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books dominate student's reading interests.
"Every time I'm upstairs walking down the hallway, those are the books they're carrying," Caudill said "So this is a perfect alignment for what they're interested in."
Caudill was the only person in the school who knew about the surprise. The assembly was framed as a regularly scheduled community meeting. Actors came on stage and began lecturing the children about the proper way to take care of library books and questioned the value of books with too many pictures.
That's when Kinney came out to roaring applause from the students. He showed students how he creates his comics and led them in games like trivia and drawing contests. The grand finale was having school librarian Mary Eberlyn compete in children's literature trivia contest to win a giant pile of books for the school (she was five out of five).
Caudill said that Eberlyn, who has been at the school for 28 years, is the secret sauce behind the school library's success. He said she's "the best librarian around."
"She works hard to make sure our kids are in there checking out books, getting the options they want," Caudill said. "She spends her own money in there just to give our kids more options to check out."
Kinney said he hopes he was able to inspire the young people at Oakland Park Elementary to become people who create things.
"I really want to make sure kids feel inspired to tell their own stories," he said. "I think every kid's story need to be told. I really hope they take a little bit of inspiration from this experience."
While the book series is now approaching 20 years old, Kinney said he still thinks he can relate to the experiences of a new generation of young people while competing with the allures of technology.
"I can't have a protagonist that's just on their phone all the time," Kinney said. "It'd be a really boring book. I know kids are really tapped into the screen culture, I can't write a character like that. So my books are really old-fashioned in a way and I think that's sort of refreshing."
Cole Behrens covers K-12 education and school districts in central Ohio. Have a tip? Contact Cole at cbehrens@dispatch.com or connect with him on X at @Colebehr_report
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Diary of a Wimpy Kid author surprises CCS students with visit, books
