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Biograpghy

Jeff Kinney is an online game developer, designer, the creator of Poptropica.com, and the #1 New York Times best-selling author and illustrator of the wildly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

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  • Jeff was born February 21, 1971 in College Park, Maryland.
  • Jeff spent his childhood in the Washington, D.C. area. As a young reader, Jeff was inspired by the books of Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Piers Anthony, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
  • He has two brothers and one sister.
  • Jeff attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s. It was there that he ran a comic strip called "lgdoof" in the campus newspaper and knew that he wanted to be become a newspaper strip cartoonist.
  • ​Jeff started writing down his ideas for Diary of a Wimpy kid in 1998.
  • In 2004, FunBrain and Kinney released an online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The website made daily entries until June 2005.The book became an instant hit, with the online version receiving about 20 million views as of 2007. 
  • In Spring of 2007 Diary of a Wimpy Kid was Published and quickly became a New York Times bestseller, eventually reaching the number one spot. 
  • In 2009, Jeff was named one of the 20 Artists & Entertainers in The TIME 100, the magazine's list of The World's Most Influential people.
  • In 2009 he won the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award.
  • In 2010, Diary of a Wimpy Kid was made into a movie. Jeff contributed to the movie as an executive producer. Two more films followed in 2011 and 2012.
  • Awarded "Author of the Year" at the 2012 Children's Choice Book Awards.
  • Jeff works full-time as a writer and designer of online games.
  • Jeff lives in Plainville, Massachusetts with his wife and their two sons.
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