If it’s fall, legions of young readers have come to expect that a new Wimpy Kid book and tour is in the offing. And author-illustrator Jeff Kinney is right on schedule, with next week’s rollout of Hot Mess (Abrams/Amulet, Oct. 22), the 19th entry in his globally bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and its supporting two-week national tour. This time around he’ll be traveling in a tricked-out Wimpy Kid food truck serving up a one-hour interactive stage show at each official stop, as well as a heaping helping of book giveaways during surprise visits and pop-ups at various schools along the way.
Hot Mess the book takes some of its inspiration from current events, landing as it does, in the waning days of the contentious presidential campaigns. “It started with the title,” Kinney said, recalling how the book took shape. Back in January, when Kinney and Abrams were discussing publication and tour dates for book 19, “I realized we would literally be touring right up to Election Day,” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s a funny thing, to be out there trying to sell a book during a really turbulent time in the country.’ So, I wanted to come up with a title that had a winking acknowledgement to the situation that we’re in. Hot Mess felt right.”
With a title in place, Kinney said that the race was on to write a story that fit it. The phrase “hot mess” initially sparked the idea of food. “I thought the combination of food and family was really intoxicating for humor,” he said. “I decided to put Greg’s extended family in a beach house that’s a little bit too small for them and have fun with the dynamics of that sort of a family vacation, and then introduced the notion of power and succession into the mix. When you add all those things together—food, power, family, and heat—you get a pretty good story.”
On October 20, Kinney and his tour troupe will take the stage at King Phillip High School in Wrentham, Mass.—the author-illustrator’s hometown and a few miles down the road from An Unlikely Story, the bookstore he co-owns with his wife—to perform The Hot Mess Show for the first time. Though the core script takes cues from the book, “We’re doing something really wild,” Kinney said. “The conceit of our show this year is that I’ve had a good run with 19 books, and everybody’s expecting me to write book 20, but writing Hot Mess made me realize that my real passion is to be a restaurateur,” he said. “And I’m going to open a restaurant that night and hire waiters and line cooks, and people to get the word out about the restaurant,” he adds—all good ploys to get kids and families involved in the act. “Everything, of course, will go wrong, but that’s the fun of it.”
The tour then hits the road for 13 additional stops, finishing up in Milwaukee on November 3. Tickets for each event include admission for one child and an accompanying adult, and one pre-autographed copy of Hot Mess.
Another fresh element of the tour is the debut of a Wimpy Kid conveyor belt. For years, Kinney has tried different tools and strategies hoping to find the most efficient way to sign books. He has been able to sign about 1,500 books per hour using a special placement of books on a table and a rolling chair. More recently, his team tweaked that idea and created a table that rotated like a Lazy Susan. But these plans were just precursors to what may be the ultimate solution. “The guy I worked with on the rotating table said, ‘What you really need is a conveyor belt,’ ” Kinney recalled. And that’s exactly what he purchased.
The new piece of equipment has been a game changer, saving both time and people power. “We’re going to carry it with us everywhere we go,” Kinney noted. “And on top of that, we’re going to use it for a hamburger creation assembly line that’s going to be a part of the show. So that little conveyor belt is going to do a lot of work.”
Taking on Censorship
As on tours past, all this fun is fueled by a critically important mission for Kinney. This time it’s spotlighting and protecting the freedom to read. “Last year, we focused on supporting librarians during a really difficult time, where they’re being challenged, where book bans are happening all over the country,” he said. “The change at the top of the Democratic ticket really helped me to see that you can frame reading in terms of freedom and choice.” He pointed to the universal concept that whenever a child goes into a library or shops at a school book fair, they have the opportunity to make an empowering decision. “It’s one of the first times that a kid has real agency, where they get to pick out something that actually says something about themselves,” Kinney said. “So, this year, I wanted to come out with a more affirmative message about making sure kids can make their own decisions on what to read, that they have a variety of choices, and that kids of every type can find books with kids like them on the covers and in the stories.”
When the Wimpy Kid food truck pulls up to a surprise venue, young readers will be able to peruse a “menu” of titles and choose something they want. “We’ve got a selection of books that are very diverse in terms of subject matter and the protagonists who are featured,” Kinney said. “I think every kid who picks a book out from the food truck will find something that appeals to them.” Literacy nonprofit First Book is providing the food truck books, featuring quantities of 10 different titles including Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston and Great Minds of Science by Tonya Bolden.
Additionally, Kinney and Abrams are partnering with First Book to donate more than 100,000 Diary of a Wimpy Kid books to schools across the country. And First Book is teaming up with General Motors to donate a diverse selection of books to Title I schools on the Hot Mess tour route, as well as donations that will enable librarians and educators who are First Book members to select items for their students from more than 10,000 new books and resources.
