Don Zimmer, a former big-league manager and now a coach with ... Because he didn`t have a college degree-he started as a copy boy-he viewed himself as a reporter, not as a writer.

Twenty years later, Kinney, author of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” returned the favor: He helped Peirce get his first book, “Big Nate: In a Class by Himself,” published by HarperCollins.