Diary of a Wimpy Kid series author Jeff Kinney hosted a group of librarians in Boston and at his Plainville, Mass., bookstore, An Unlikely Story, over the weekend of June 7–9. He got behind the wheel of his Wimpy Kid book bus and chaperoned everyone around his favorite haunts. In addition to seeing the Freedom Trail, Boston Public Library, and Trident Booksellers and Café, the group visited Kinney’s Wimpy Kid studio and enjoyed dinner with special guest authors Tony and Angela DiTerlizzi; the Italian menu nodded to the spaghetti-and-meatballs theme of Wimpy Kid #19, Hot Mess, due out from Amulet in October. Each participant also got a shopping spree at An Unlikely Story and took home 50 new books for their school or local library.
The gathering evolved from Kinney’s 18th Wimpy Kid title, No Brainer, a sendup of school controversies from underfunding to book banning. “This was my first book that’s really a farce,” Kinney told PW. Among other things, he skewers censorship in a subplot about contraband comics, and in the acknowledgments he thanks “every librarian for your dedication to connecting kids with books.”
No Brainer’s launch tour on the West Coast last fall contributed more than $100,000 to school and local libraries and diversified library collections with books donated by 11 publishers. Kinney said publishers provided high-quality titles representing a range of children’s identities and experiences, making it “a pure pleasure to visit a library and drop off a bunch of new books” along the tour.
“Our tour was built around celebrating and supporting libraries and librarians, and we wanted to do something really specific” to sustain that attention, Kinney said, so he and his marketing team devised the all-star librarian outreach as “the cherry on top” of No Brainer’s festivities. He invited his fans to nominate all-star librarians from across the U.S., and sorted through nominees; Kinney covered airfare, hotels, and meals for the trip to Massachusetts.
The friendly competition’s grand prize recipient, librarian Kelly Kiff of Sparta Middle School in northwest New Jersey, will join Kinney and his Wimpy Kid float at this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Since 2010, a balloon likeness of Kinney’s main character Greg Heffley has lofted from Central Park West to Herald Square.) Kiff, a staunch supporter of the right to read, teaches an information literacy course for sixth graders; she also partners with minor-league baseball team the Sussex County Miners and indie bookstore Sparta Books on student reading initiatives. She called the opportunity to meet Kinney and fellow educators “a librarian book-lover nerd’s dream.”
In addition to Kiff, Kinney’s guests included Flora Camacho (Mildred Baskin Elementary School, Tex.), Kim Christensen (Springville Library, Utah), Brandy Hudson (Timber Ridge Elementary, Ga.), Ashley Knotts (Anna Jarvis Elementary, W.Va.), Barb Ohashi (Dexter McCarty Middle School, Ore.), and Elijah Olson (Horizon Elementary Library, Wash.). Another winner, Kathy Cole (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Library, Ore.), was unable to attend.
Each librarian was nominated for their activism or innovation, from freedom to read activities to a book vending machine to blind-date-with-a-book events. Hudson, a media specialist, puts popular titles on a rolling cart and visits classrooms to offer “book tastings” that entice kids to visit the library. “There’s so much pressure on teachers to get the curriculum done, and [reading for pleasure] can get lost in the shuffle” of test scores and benchmarks, Hudson said, so her goal is to bring in the fun. She’s also concerned about book bans, cuts to library staffing and purchasing, and student access to books outside the assigned curriculum. “If you look at vision, mission, and schoolwide initiatives, literacy is number one,” Hudson said. “But there’s this disconnect” when it comes to funding.
If the librarians were stoked to visit Kinney and meet one another, their students were equally in awe. When Timber Ridge’s Hudson told her elementary students she was going to meet the author, she said, “They were like, ‘Whoa, can you take me with you?’ ”
Before traveling, Sparta Middle School’s Kiff invited her students to submit questions. The results ranged from endorsements (“Can you make a spinoff about Rodrick? He is most definitely the best character in my opinion”) to judgments (“Why is Manny a psychopath?”) to career consultation (“When you were my age, 12 years old, did you ever think you would become such a successful writer?”). Perhaps the most perspicacious query involved the cooties-related game of Cheese Touch: “Can you ever look at cheese the same way?” Information specialists that they are, the librarians gathered insider wisdom to take home.
Kinney has doubled down on his philanthropy of late, including a five-year revitalization plan for his Plainville hometown that will add park space and a restaurant at the intersection where An Unlikely Story occupies a corner. He said the weekend librarian event was likely a one-off that “feels specific to this moment,” yet he’s open to finding different people or professions to celebrate. “I love the idea of spending real time with people who make a difference, with people who don’t always get the recognition they deserve,” he said.
“Librarians are under an extraordinary amount of pressure,” Kinney continued. They are managing “challenges they probably could not have imagined when they embarked on their careers. We just thought it was a good time to have a celebration for librarians who are fighting the good fight.”
