Jeff Kinney is an American game designer, cartoonist, producer, actor, movie director and The New York Times best-selling author of children’s book. He is a six-time Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award for Favorite book and is best known for the ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ book series. He was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and he is the creator of the child-oriented website Poptropica, one of Time magazine’s 50 Best Websites. The movie adaptation of ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul’ will open in theaters on Friday May 19 and stars Jason Drucker as Greg, Alicia Silverstone as Susan Heffley and Tom Everett Scott as Frank Heffley.

According to Amazon, ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul’ is book nine in the series and has Greg and his family on a road trip. The trip includes a pacifier-stealing pig, hungry seagulls and a broken-down car until they end up stranded miles from home without any money. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series began in 1998 when he came up with the idea of a middle-school weakling named Greg Heffley, who writes illustrated stories about his personal life. Kinney released an online version of these stories on the website FunBrain where he made daily entries until June 2005. An online book version was created in 2006 and it became such a hit that he eventually released a printed version. There are twelve books in the series.