Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess

All his life, Jeff Kinney wanted to be a cartoonist. As a student at the University of Maryland in the 1990s, he published his comic strip “Igdoof” in the college newspaper, but he soon discovered that succeeding in the real world as a syndicated cartoonist is no easy task. So, after school, he supported himself as a newspaper designer and computer programmer, while working out ideas for a children’s book that combined cartoons with conventional storytelling.