'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' Author Makes Big Splash at Fort Washington School

FORT WASHINGTON, MD — Jeff Kinney has become a world-famous author thanks to the success of his Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series, but long, long ago, he was just another kid in school in Fort Washington trying to survive childhood. And this week, he came back home.

Kinney showed up at Potomac Landing Elementary School on Nov. 1 to promote his new book, "Double Down," the latest entry in his hugely popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, which sold 58 million copies in print worldwide by 2010. And he was here not long ago for some inspiration, although no one knew it.

"This place really has magic for me, Fort Washington, Maryland," Kinney said in an interview with NBC 4. "In fact a few months ago I came back just to walk the streets as I walked as child, just to see what kind of ideas I had, what kind of memories would come to me from my childhood.

"I would say that the DNA of my books is in my childhood here," he added.

In addition to being born and brought up in Fort Washington, he attended the University of Maryland at College Park in the early 1990s, and created a comic strip, Igdoof, that ran in the campus newspaper, The Diamondback.

Today, he lives in Massachusetts and travels around the world, but clearly he hasn't forgotten where he came from.

Image via Prince George's County Public Schools