MY FRIEND ISABELLA is eight and opens her autograph book at the page headed Rich and Famous. “Oh, I’m a rich and famous person. Wow, wow, wow,” says Jacqueline Wilson, before signing her name, plain and legible, and drawing a picture of herself with short hair, black clothes, hands loaded with the biggest rings you have ever seen, and pointy boots.
Wilson is indeed rich and famous, though that is not her overriding perception of herself. In the past 13 years she has sold more than 12 million books in Britain, and is now selling 100,000 a month. Today she is named Britain’s most borrowed author. Since records of Public Lending Rights began 17 years ago Catherine Cookson has been the dominant figure, but now Wilson, the eminent children’s author, has ended Dame Catherine’s reign by clocking up more than two million library loans in 2002-03 — also beating John Grisham, J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, who takes 42nd place.
Wilson is thrilled, though unable to stop herself from suggesting that her success has come about only because Cookson is no longer alive to compete. That is debatable, because what Wilson has created over the past decade is a one-woman genre of children’s literature. Forget fantasy, Wilson writes reality, wrapping stories around disadvantaged children: failing parents, broke parents, divorced parents, alcoholic parents, they are all there, as are numerous sad kids anxious to fit in somewhere and certain that they don’t. Her Tracy Beaker is in care; her newest protagonist, Lola Rose, has a violent dad and a mum who discovers a lump.
Yet there is nothing brutal or even bleak about Wilson’s world because her writing is warmed with jaunty attitude and jokes, and however dysfunctional the adults there is always a good dollop of love from at least one who cares. Key to her success, too, is that she invariably writes in the first person from inside the child’s mind. What she produces is reality that comforts; she is on the child’s side, as many girls aged between seven and 14 (and not a few boys) have discovered. That is why they read her, write to her and queue for hours to meet her in bookshops. Equally enamoured of them, she returns the compliment most weeks by talking to them at schools and libraries. Children choose her books because her name is on them, and she is nothing if not accessible.
“If people were unkind to me they’d say I’ve never matured,” she says. “I have vivid memories of the way I felt when I was eight and the books I read reflected secure, happy families. But when I write I don’t reflect that because the world has changed and I feel that life isn’t plush and well-heeled for most kids. Children are much more sophisticated and knowing, and yet much less independent. The child’s world and the adult world seem to have merged in some ways, they are more like equals. I don’t know if it’s to do with television but children know so much more about things and are sometimes less embarrassed about discussing feelings and understanding other people. And sometimes they’re not and are just awkward or different. I find them more interesting than adults because they’re more direct. They say things from a sharper point of view.”
As Wilson talks she uses her hands, which makes her rings click. These flamboyant silver baubles are the only outward sign that there is more to her than a gentle soul who never prescribes and claims not really to understand why her books have touched a nerve, though she is delighted that they have. She recognises that contemporary children are emotionally literate, I suggest, and she addresses universal themes: inside every child is someone who thinks they don’t belong. She avoids the moral high ground too, and never perpetuates the traditional literary myths of romantic love and perfect endings.
Wilson’s responses are pleasantly modest. It is not that she isn’t a confident woman, but she doesn’t presume to have big answers, and indeed she doesn’t need them. Why are so many middle-class children hooked on reading about sink-estate kids? That’s puzzling, she says.
“Obviously I write to express myself and to entertain children, but if they feel comforted as a by-product of that, and they feel other people worry about the same things, that’s lovely. If ever a traumatic thing happens to me I don’t want to read a self-help book, because they don’t have a sense of humour. I want to read a well-written novel where the character is dealing with a similar situation. There are things that you don’t tell your total best friend because you don’t want to bore them, but in a book, inside someone else’s head — that’s what I like to do for children.”
This point has been missed by some middle-class parents, who feel that Wilson’s depiction of working-class woe is unsuitable for their children. Wilson points out that her books are aimed at different age groups, and that she has no control over who reads them. So she writes with care, and while her 14-year-old characters may allude to sex (they never actually do it) the references are oblique enough to be missed by a younger child who is reading for the story.
She mentions her book The Suitcase Kid, which is about divorce. Some children have said they don’t like the ending because they would like the parents to reunite. “Often in children’s books the child does something good or clever and the mum and dad get back together again. I feel it’s unfair to put this burden on the child. It’s probably unlikely that their parents will get back together. I’m currently going through divorce myself but we ’ve been amicably separated for seven years and my daughter has long grown up so it’s relatively problem-free.”
Wilson grew up in a council flat in Kingston upon Thames in southwest London — where she still lives, with 15,000 books, in a small, chaotic house. “My parents individually did interesting and sweet things with me but a lot of the time there were tensions, rows. It was difficult, but no more or less than other kids’ families. I was a strange child because I rather liked being by myself and playing imaginary games. I can still be sucked back into that time.”
After a stint working for the Scottish publishers DC Thomson, who named Jackie magazine after her, Wilson married at 19 and had a daughter at 21. Her life has worked out splendidly, she says, because she was able to fit her work around her daughter as she grew up, and around her policeman husband’s shifts. “If I had shot to fame when she was little it wouldn’t have worked. You can’t do talks in schools when your own daughter needs a mummy there to meet her. It’s lovely because normally when you’re middle-aged everything starts to become dreary and upsetting and you’re ignored. Whereas for me I’ve become middle-aged and lots of smashing things have happened.”
Apart from the divorce? “When you’re relatively well-heeled and haven’t got dependent children it isn’t too horrific,” she replies. Is there a connection between the breakdown of her marriage and her success? “Technically my husband met somebody else. For a long time my husband’s job was very demanding as he rose through the ranks, then when he got to the time to retire it’s a big change. Maybe he just wanted someone new in his life. I don’t know.”
She is 58 and clearly fulfilled and seems happily uncomplicated. She can treat herself to antiquarian books and to cool and wispy clothes from Ghost, though she has “no interest in leading a posh lifestyle whatsoever”, she says. She will move house locally, though not to anywhere huge because she would rattle around, “and that would be scary”.
But, like all phenonemally successful people, she is focused and her biggest and perhaps only problem is to meet the demands on her time. She writes on trains, and answers 300 letters a week. “I read every one really carefully. They might say very little and then at the bottom they put ‘I still miss my mum’. And because it’s my job to care about this I think this one needs a proper letter, so on several evenings a week I stay up till midnight writing letters. But I also feel I need to socialise and see friends and go to the pub for quiz night, so I’m forever trying to keep a balance of what works best. I do think you need to do ordinary things.”
REALITY, IMAGINATION AND HUMOUR: WHY WE LOVE HER
I’VE read nearly all her books. I really like her because they’re so real and she writes about children’s emotions. All her writing is about children who have had bad stuff happen to them, and these things happen in real life. Her characters are not exactly like me but I can still relate to their feelings.
JASMINE WARK, 10
HER books are really funny. I like it when instead of a baby werewolf it’s a werepuppy. I like the jokes. I know there’s no such thing as a werewolf but her stories do feel real.
RYAN GREENWOOD, 9
I LIKE Jacqueline Wilson books because they are imaginative. I don’t know anyone who is similar to her characters and that’s one reason I enjoy them. The books are funny, for instance in The Bed and Breakfast Star, Elsa’s hair is like a lion’s mane which I think is very cool. I like Elsa’s personality, she’s not much of a girlie-girl, she’s more of a tomboy. I also like her jokes.
MIRANDA COPPS, 10
I LIKE Jacqueline Wilson’s stories because they are always based on reality. And her endings aren’t happy but not sad. I like Lizzie Zipmouth. It’s about a little girl called Lizzie and she stops talking because her mum is marrying another man that she doesn’t like. She becomes friends with her great-grandma. Her great grandma has lots of china and plastic dolls. I also like the bit in The Bed and Breakfast Star, when Elsa goes to live in a bed and breakfast hotel which was really a dump. And in The Lottie Project I like the fact that Lottie’s mum is very young. Her friends think she’s Lottie's big sister. I feel safe when I'm reading her books, because I know that it’s not happening to me.
ISABELLA NIKOLIC, 8
