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The Most Hotly-Anticipated Children’s Book of 2012
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE THIRD WHEEL
£12.99 HB & Wimp-ebook
Also available on CD, £6.99, from Puffin Audiobooks
14th November 2012
75 million copies sold worldwide (Diary of a Wimpy Kid series)
Translated into 41 languages (Diary of a Wimpy Kid series)
The UK’s biggest and fastest selling children’s book of 2011 (Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever)
Voted by UK children as ‘The Best Children’s Book of the Last Decade’
(Diary of a Wimpy Kid beats Harry Potter – March 2012)
In this, the seventh book in the series, love is in the air - A Valentine's Day dance at Greg's school has turned his
world upside down. As Greg scrambles to find a date, he's worried he'll be left out in the cold on the big night.
His best friend, Rowley, doesn't have any prospects either, but that's small consolation. An unexpected twist
gives Greg a partner for the dance and leaves Rowley the odd man out. But a lot can happen in one night, and in
the end, you never know who's going to be lucky in love...
The Third Film in this Major Film franchise
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID 3: Dog Days
(On Blu-ray Triple Play and DVD)
£24.99 and £19.99
26th November 2012
In the latest hilarious film adventure featuring eponymous hero Greg Heffley,
school is out and Greg and his un-cool best friend Rowley Jefferson are
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looking forward to their summer vacation. However Greg soon begins to realise what he wants to do and what
his father wants him to do over the summer are very different things. Following a ban on video games, a trip to
the local country club with Rowley and his parents soon ensures Greg’s summer takes an interesting turn and
another plan is hatched - although in traditional Wimpy Kid style, his plan doesn’t exactly go smoothly!
Notes to Editors:
The Wimpy Kid books are 50% comic-strip, 50% novel and 100% hilarious.
More than 75 million Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are in print in 41 languages in more than 44 countries around
the world. UK sales alone exceed 10 million.
The series is a fixture in the Nielsen Bookscan Charts, the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Publishers
Weekly bestseller lists. It has also remained consistently in the top spots on the New York Times lists since
publication of the first book in the series in the US in 2007.
There are three major motions pictures based on the books, which have grossed more than $200 million
worldwide in box office sales
The books and films diarise the rib-ticklingly funny exploits of Greg Heffley, a smart-aleck student who finds
himself thrust into a new school where undersize weaklings like him share the corridors with kids who are taller,
meaner and already shaving.
The books are often praised as being able to convert even the most ‘reluctant’ reader
About the Author:
Jeff Kinney was born in 1971 in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s. It was
there that he ran a comic strip called ‘lgdoof’ in the campus newspaper and where he knew he wanted to be a
cartoonist. After failed attempts to gain work as a professional cartoonist, he landed a job as a web developer
for Pearson Education and has since worked on the massively popular virtual world of Pop Tropica and the very
successful educational website Funbrain.com. Jeff spent six years writing the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which
he then published in daily instalments on Funbrain.com. Publisher Abrams in the US, noticing the phenomenal
popularity of the cartoons, then published it in book form turning Jeff’s long-held dream into a reality. In 2009,
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Jeff Kinney was voted one of TIME magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People. Jeff lives with his family in
southern Massachusetts, USA.
In March, 2011, the first-ever Wimpy Kid Island, Wimpy Wonderland, debuted on the hugely popular virtual
world Pop Tropica www.poptropica.com/wimpywonderland_island.html and is now one of the most visited areas
of the site.
Fans can interact with the brand at www.wimpykidclub.co.uk and on Facebook at WimpyKidBooksUK.
For further information, please contact:
Tania Vian-Smith, Head of PR on
020 7010 3058 or [email protected]