Jacqueline Wilson Annual 2023

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I loved the focus on children with disabilities, and the highlighting of the importance of Makaton. I am a firm believer that Makaton should be taught to all children from a young age. I also LOVED the fact that Uncle Gary was a Drag Queen! Lots of diversity was explored and celebrated in this book, and that’s exactly what children need to be exposed to within their reading for pleasure. Children need to know that everybody is different and that that’s more than okay. I know some have found the transition to modern life a little jarring, as the original book was set in the early 2000s and the sequel includes references to TikTok and drag queens, but to me it didn't read as weird or out of place, simply a different aspect of life at the primary school not shown in the first book. I think the addition of a drag queen was interesting, as I don't think all parents will necessarily enjoy the talk about nightclubs and might find the switching pronouns complicated. I'm not a parent, so I really don't know where I stand on this. I think maybe a little more explanation could've been nice, as I know as a child I would've been very confused by Uncle Gary's appearance as a woman and the use of she/her to refer to him, on and off! Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath in 1945, but spent most of her childhood in Kingston-on-Thames. She always wanted to be a writer and wrote her first "novel" when she was nine, filling countless Woolworths' exercise books as she grew up. Since having her daughter, Emma she has been writing full time. With Jo James, our programme director, I also try to pair authors and interviewers creatively, to stimulate lively sessions. Among our ‘perfect pairings’ this year are these:

Jacqueline is one of the nation’s favourite authors, and her books are loved and cherished by young readers not only in the UK but all over the world. She has sold millions of books and in the UK alone the total now stands at over 35 million!

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The only issue I have - I found a few small inaccuracies. The main one is how much more modern this book is than the other - there’s tiktok and mobile phones and social media etc. I get how many years later it is but the difference is huge. Lily, Daisy's older sister, decides that she is also going to throw a brilliant sleepover on the same night as Chloe's. How can they possibly compete? Tween friendship dramas, inclusive characters and best friends make this the perfect book for 8-12 year old readers. Lily is disabled and represented in a realistic and respectful manner. Her interactions with her friends and family using the sign / symbol language of Makaton ( called Key Word Sign in Australia and used by people all over the world who have speech delay or communication difficulties) and joy at being understood, included and able to make her wants known is palpable. Also, as a disabled person, I feel like Lily's sleepover was a bit much. Like I think I'd have had sensory overwhelm with all this! But then, I didn't like sleeping over at other kid's houses! Where this book really shines is with the writing of Lily. Lily is an actual real character now, where as in the original book she was just like a prop or plot device. The first book really did Lily wrong with the way she was written, and I'm glad JW righted that wrong here. Lily is shown to be her own person, with her own thoughts and feelings, just like every other disabled person. (I am disabled myself. I am autistic. I thought there was something wrong with me when I first read the first book as a child because I'm disabled like Lily, just in a different way.) Lily is smart and capable enough to communicate with her sister Daisy, and they have some lovely interactions in the book. I loved Lily's character. She's a lot of fun.

Honestly the first one was a better book, but Lily was better written in this one. I might just be nostalgic for my own childhood though. Jacqueline Wilson inspired my love of reading as a child and it is her I have to thank for my lifelong love for it. Sleepovers is one of the first Jacqueline Wilson books that I remember reading as a child - and rereading over and over again! So despite the fact that I am now 27 years old, I requested the ARC for this follow up on NetGalley and was delighted to be approved! 🤩It’s not like I’ve grown out of her books though or anything because I still read her older books and enjoy them. It’s just this story felt a bit unnecessary. I loved the continuation of disability representation though, and I found the drag queen reference interesting- not something I’ve come across in a children’s book before! I thought Lily’s disability was handled in a much more educational way in this newer book too, with explanations to the specialist school she goes to and the use of Makaton. I absolutely loved it! I loved how Lily was a much more developed character this time around; last time, she was talked about a lot but we never really got to know her very well. But this time she was more developed and I absolutely loved how she communicated with those around her using Makatron. I had never heard of Makatron before this book so it was so good to learn about it!! My only negative, is the first book was written when mobiles weren't big, except in size, and the internet wasn't as easily accessible, especially on a mobile device. References made to tiktok and dance trends make it more relevant. It wasn't too overplayed, but in my mind, it was hard to accept that suddenly social media is in this universe.

Jacqueline has been on countless shortlists and has won numerous awards, including The Young Telegraph/Fully Booked Award in 1995 for The Bed and Breakfast Star, the Smarties Prize, the Sheffield Children's Book Award and the Children's Book Award for Double Act. The Illustrated Mum was on the shortlist for the 1999 Whitbread Children's Book Award and has won the 1999 Children's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Daisy has just moved to a new school and making new friends is hard but when she joins Chloe, Emily Amy and Bella she thinks she is set. But Chloe always has to be the best, and soon the friends are split. Emily is now Daisy's best friend but when Chloe announces that she is going to throw THE BEST SLEEPOVER IN THE WORLD Daisy is worried her new friends will be forced by Chloe to choose between going to the sleepover and being friends with Daisy. This book is the sequel to Jacqueline Wilson's Sleepovers, which is a book I read as a child. Honestly I reread the first book before reading this, but I can’t say I think the author did, as there were a couple of inconsistencies between the two.I'd say kids should definitely read it. As an adult, only read it if you really want to see Lily written better than in the first one! A bit of a boring book apart from that though. If you have really fond memories of the original, maybe give this one a miss unless your curiosity is killing you! I thought they captured its spirit perfectly and Dani Harmer was just superb as Tracy. We were exploring some quite adult themes and I didn’t think it was going to be so big. Years later, though, I was on Blue Peter and they had a huge cardboard cutout of Tracy behind me. I was sitting at her feet, like she’d taken over me. By then, if I walked down the street and people recognised me, they’d call out: “Tracy Beaker!” Not much really happened in the book, and the writing was rather bland. Even the mean girl Chloe, who was an absolutely awful child in the first book, didn't really do much here. It's almost as if JW was worried about offending anyone if she made her mean character too mean. Which, come on, if you've read any of JW's other work, well it’s very colourful. It’s interesting. But this book is quite boring apart from the disabled kids and it’s rather sad. And the disabled kids are only done well because it's so refreshing to see disabled characters in media!

Over 7 million copies of her books have now been sold in the UK alone. In a recent poll to find the Nation's Favourite Children's Book run by the BBC programme, Bookworm, Double Act was voted 10th and was the only contemporary title in the top ten. Jacqueline herself was voted 4th in the Treasure Islands Favourite Children's Author poll. Extremely well-connected, their idea of starting slowly was to invite Lady Antonia Fraser, Anthony Horowitz, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Frayn to take part. All duly spoke at St Michael & All Angels, with other writers such as the Windrush poet James Berry, and we were on our way. Double Act won the prestigious Smarties Medal and the Children’s Book Award as well as being highly commended for the Carnegie Medal. The Story of Tracy Beaker won the 2002 Blue Peter People’s Choice Award.Uncle Gary is amazing, and i loved how his drag queen persona was brought into the book as well, that was so good to see! I was quite looking forward to reading this when I first heard that Jacqueline Wilson was doing a sequel to her 2001 book Sleepovers, 22 years after the original, and was interested to see what it would be like. Despite seemingly continuing from where they left off, taking place only right after the original book, it included some present-day elements such as TikTok, which didn't seem to fit in with the timeline of things, being a continuity error at that, given that the previous book took place in 2001, long before TikTok and most social media platforms and apps for that matter existed, but then again I could see why it would be easier to include these elements into a story being written today, especially when involving kids with all the trends they following being social media centered. A sequel to Sleepovers, first published in 2001(!!) TBSITW follows on from the first book. The first chapter is a brief recap of the first book, which I was glad for, as its been a while! Daisy's former friend Chloe is throwing the world's best sleepover, and Daisy's sister, Lily, isn't going to let that happen,and they decide to throw their own sleepover on the same day, with their best friends and family. I also liked Lily's friend Natalie when she was introduced, though maybe she wasn't in the book for long enough. I think perhaps the book might have been better if the story had been told from Lily's perspective, or perhaps with alternating viewpoints from both Daisy and Lily. I think showing Natalie as having a different disability to Lily is actually really good as well, because disability looks different for every disabled person.