Alexandria, Virginia’s Riverside Elementary School hosted the World Premiere of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” thanks to a winning entry selected out of 5000 competing schools in a competition to host the premiere for their students.

The school safety patrols lined up on the playground to yell “I am a Wimpy Kid!”

The premiere event was held after school yesterday in conjunction with the National Education Association’s (NEA) “Read Across America” program, which focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources; the NEA has designated March as National Reading Month. NEA also sponsored the contest, along with 20th Century Fox, School Library Journal, and publisher Harry N. Abrams Inc. The School Library Journal hosted and facilitated the promotion, and Promethean presented the school with its ActivClassroom technology.

There was a full Hollywood-style red carpet with the school patrol kids providing security. I spoke to April Cage, the instructional coach who wrote the winning entry.

Author Jeff Kinney told me that the question he gets asked most often by kids is “What does ploopy mean?” It’s just a made-up word that his sister used to call him.

I asked Robert Capron about playing Rowley (note the Zooey Mama t-shirt!):

Director Thor Freudenthal talked about how happy he was to bring the movie to the Riverside school.

Zachary Gordon told me how lucky he felt to play Wimpy Kid Greg Heffley — and to go to a school that is the opposite of the one in the movie because it’s the kind of place where “if you fall everyone comes over to make sure you’re all right.”