Brought up on a diet of Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and The Far Side, Kinney dreamed as a student of becoming a newspaper cartoonist but says modestly that his "lack of talent as an illustrator" put paid to that ambition. Instead, he took a job after college as a graphic and layout designer on a local newspaper and went on to conceive and set up Poptropica, an educational gaming site for children. As if to confirm the impression I've been getting that his global success as an author has not quite sunk in, Kinney tells me he still works for Poptropica full-time."They are very understanding when I need to go on book tours, but when I get back to my normal life it is nine-to-five every day. I only work on my books at nights and at weekends. It is really just like a hobby," he says, albeit an incredibly time-consuming one. Each book takes nine months of evenings and weekends to finish, leaving little time for anything else. Luckily, his wife, Julie, is "very supportive" and his sons, Will, nine, and Grant, six, enjoy watching him draw – "so I spend time with them that way". A self-confessed big kid, who would happily eat "junk cereal" for every meal, he has also just become cub-scout master for his boys' local troop in Plainville, Massachussets, which he is "very excited about".