When Jeff Kinney first thought up the idea for his novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid in 1998, when he was a frustrated would-be newspaper cartoonist, he couldn’t have dreamed of the world-conquering franchise it would become. Since the first instalment published in 2007, Diary of a Wimpy Kid has spawned more than a dozen sequels, a successful film franchise, even a musical—and a German-language audio series. Published in Germany under the name Gregs Tagebuch, it follows the high-school pushover of the same name as he navigates life as a teenager via a slew of consistently comedic misadventures.