In 1988 while living in Maryland, USA, Jeff Kinney came up with the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a story about a middle-school weakling named Greg Heffley. Jeff worked on his book for almost eight years before showing it to a publisher in New York. Since then the book series took off, even resulting in film adaptions of some of the Wimpy Kid books. Jeff has now written over 17 books about Greg and his friends. Read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series in order here.