Smartest kid on the block

Nick Duerden

This month, the American children's writer Jeff Kinney published the 10th book in his blockbusting Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Entitled Old School, it came out simultaneously in more than 90 countries, and within a single week had sold a million copies. With figures like this, Kinney need never have strayed from home and could have simply concentrated on writing the 11th book, but instead he decided to head out to promote it even more. In the past two weeks he has visited Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, China and Japan. This week it's the UK, and then he's on to other sundry European destinations, before heading on to South America.

The number of copies in print of Wimpy Kid now exceeds 164 million, there's a film franchise and Time magazine has voted Kinney among the 100 most influential people on the planet. He started designing children's websites, and in his spare time continued drawing, replacing Igdoof with a middle-school student, Greg Heffley. And lo, Diary of a Wimpy Kid was born.

—The Independent