BUZZ BOOK: With ‘The Getaway,’ it’s a Wimpy Kid family vacation

In the late ’ 90s, Jeff Kinney was trying to make it as a newspaper cartoonist, and it wasn’t happening. “I couldn’t make any headway at all, just generic rejection,” Kinney tells The Post. “I was a cartoonist who drew like a seventh-grader, and I decided to embrace that. So I came up with this idea of Greg Heffley and started.” The first book took him six years to complete. Greg Heffley was the young protagonist of his “Wimpy Kid” series, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, with almost 200 million books in print. The 12th installation of the series, “The Get- away,” released in early November, finds the Heffleys stressed out by the coming holidays; they decide to decamp to a tropical resort. It won’t surprise parents to learn that the “paradise” vacation comes with its fair share of chaos. Kinney drew upon plenty of real-life inspiration. “I included every bad thing I could think of from my many years of traveling with my family,” he says. “You always think that every moment of vacation will be magical. And then you end up in a moment where you’re worse off than you were when you were at home.” The “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” balloon was a part of this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (pictured with Kinney). The balloon made its debut in 2010.

The series is now available in 53 languages. “I found myself at a press conference in China, and a girl said that it impacted her. These are the stories of childhood. Not just one boy,” says Kinney. “Childhood is universal for the most part. Most of us grow up with parents and pets and bullies and homework — we have this in common. When I sit across the table from a kid in Brazil, I know it’s because he can see himself in my books.”