Huey, Dewey & Louie in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp.

My heroes: Huey, Dewey and Louie by Jeff Kinney

The bestselling author of the Wimpy Kid books on how his entire frame of reference was established reading Donald Duck comics

Friday 24 January 2014

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s a kid snooping around my parents' room, I came across world-class, life-altering literature in the most unlikely form: comic books. My father had spent most of his life collecting the works of Carl Barks, the genius writer and illustrator of the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories written between the 1940s and 1960s. I can say without a touch of exaggeration that my entire frame of reference for history, geography, archaeology and religion was established reading Barks's comic books. His globe-trotting tales were like National Geographic come to life, with ducks leading the way.

My favourite tales were those in which Donald's nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, were along for the ride. Donald was full of bluster and Uncle Scrooge full of greed, but the triplets were cool in the face of danger, curious, keen for adventure, and most of all, resourceful. One of my favourite stories was "Maharajah Donald", which starts off in Duckburg, where Donald hires his nephews to clean his garage. He rewards them with a stub of a pencil. Instead of allowing themselves to be insulted, Huey, Dewey and Louie make the best of their situation, trading the pencil with a local kid for a ball of string. Several savvy moves later, the boys are in possession of a steamliner ticket to India. Donald claims it for himself, the boys stow away on the ship, and the next thing you know, the ducks are in India, where the boys have to save Donald from being fed to the royal tigers. Just when all hope is lost, they find a stub of a pencil, which causes them to announce (in unison, of course), "We're rich!"

Carl Barks said his characters were really people who just looked like ducks. Reading his stories, it was easy to get swept up in the narrative, and forget that the heroes had bills and webbed feet (and wore shirts and hats, but no trousers). Huey, Dewey and Louie taught me a lot about the world, and how to get out of a jam. All you need is the stub of a pencil.

 Jeff Kinney is the author of the Wimpy Kid books. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck is out from Puffin.

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