Mumsnet Talk

DD2 (11) devours JW, Cathy Cassidy and other similar stuff and likes them being like real life and has since she was about 8 or 9.
DD1 and I agree with ummlilia's DD that they are depressing.

Suit Case Kid should be compulsory reading for parents thinking of splitting up, but I'm less sure about DCs.

DD1 (and me) like HP, Percy Jackson, Alex Rider and the like.

DD1 likes the hunger games, which I can't bring myself to read (the basic premise gives me the shivers). She also devours fantasy,dragons, vampires and the like. She started Lord of the rings and bought the DVD

Neither will read the classics, DD2 just looks at you in that way only preteens can.

DD1 is dyslexic and they are just too wordy. I'm mildly dyslexic too and moved from The twins at st. Claires to adult thrillers s and lace and never read any either.

Two things the DDs do agree on. They like Twilight and most Michel Morpergo's are too sad.

In any case you Dancergirls right you won't keep up with DDs aquiring of books. DD1 had read all the sixth form only section by 14 (she's a librarian)

Dd3 is nearly 6 and has read some JW, mainly 'borrowed' from her sisters' bedrooms!

Hate to break this to you OP, but if you have a keen reader, you won't be able to monitor what they read for much longer. They'll get their hands on all sorts of books from school, the library, borrowed from friends etc. I can't keep up now with what dd2 reads, she gets through them v quickly.

It's good to read a wide range and if your dd wants to read JW that's fine IMO, the younger ones are fine for her age.

My quite grown -up 8 year old hates these books because 'they're too much like real life'.. ( not our lives I hasten to add..{blush} * She finds them depressing , and so do I..

The books are written in different age categories. Depending on your child age category you can let him/her read them. You can check their website here.

I don't care for Jacqueline Wilson's work. I was surprised to read that she is a Dame and is/was? the Children's Laureate. However, I confess to having read very little of her books. My daughters have read several, ostensibly those aimed at the younger reader, I believe (and hope). I did not appreciate my eight year old asking me what a 'hooker' is, amongst other things. Tracey Beaker and its offshoots seem to be on the television morning, noon and night in my house. (Yes, I know, I'm the mummy and I can turn it off - if I can brace myself against the outcry). I can't stand the sight and sound of the characters' voices droning on and I feel that these programmes have a detrimental effect on my kids. Also, in one JW on tv last night, one of the characters mentioned, 'mum kept most of his milk teeth'. In the Suitcase Kid, Father Christmas's existence is blatantly called into question. These aspects are unnecessary and an author who really cared about kids would not include them, but I get the feeling Jacqueline Wilson enjoys writing that sort of thing.

A few years ago I was instructed to hear a group of girls read this latter book over a several weeks in school. I think the children were in the early weeks of Year 4. I found the book depressing and rude and was so pleased when after about a third to a half of the book the girls, en masse, asked if we could please stop reading it as they found it rude and unpleasant. And no, I don't think I brainwashed them. The teachers all seemed it think the book was good, though, and beneficial to children whose parents have separated. (My daughter read this as a class book when her dad and I had just separated and she said it made her feel quite depressed, and even more worried about the future).

I have read sections of JW's work which were inoffensive and readable. My elder daugher assured me, too, that Hetty Feather was inoffensive. However, I have read bits that just make feel feel - well - yucky. And no, there is no cathartic feeling. And some of the characters say things that are adult which are just not realistic. She had a child say that she wished a teacher or someone-or-other had worn a sports bra whilst dancing at a party. Well, I do not think any young child would think that, and there was no useful purpose served by the comment that I could see. She just has some nasty characters. In fairness, having slated her, I should go and read her whole body of work in order to be properly objective.

My dds have read JW from about 6 or 7, but I agree there's a big difference from the younger books and the teen ones, and it would be helpful if you could see that clearly on the cover. I don't censor them for my dds but they have tended to avoid the teen topics til recently (aged 10 and 11 now). Some of them are much better than others (I have discovered recently from a phase of having JW audio CDs in the car). Sleepovers was crap. Girls in Tears etc seems silly. Others I really like.

If they find Secret Garden a bit slow you could try a Little Princess, that has been very popular with my dds, I loved it too as a child.

and yy to Jennings and Darbishire, though you don't see them around these days. Nor do you find Biggles very often, another of my old favourites (and massively un pc all round).

Interesting looking at the website KatherineClifton, they mostly seem to be aimed at 9-11 but the marketing seems to be targeting younger girls, i.e. the magazine etc.

Thanks for the tip on getting older version - the updated Just William was totally ozard

DD has been reading JW since she was 6/7. She also gets the JW mag monthly.
She has just started reading the new JW book Sapphire Battersea.

DD is 9..8 yrs and i am trying to get her to read a wider variety of books.

I must admit i have kept the older JW books until she is 10 + . After this age I will let her read what she likes within reason .

Fossilised fishhooks! Never heard of Jennings Too ozard for words. Make sure you get them in the original - I think there may also be a modernised version.

And yy to The Secret Garden being dull.

Thanks. My DC seem to read anything and everything. Perhaps your DD would like Dickens, the abridged childified versions? I think they are quite pacy.

katharine Girls in Love was the book that dd1 didn't like. It is def for older readers and should probably have been in the teenage section at the library, in fact...I will let them know next time I'm over there.

I would LOVE dd1 to get interested in some of the classics but the narrative does drone on and on and on. She started the secret garden but it wasn't fast-paced enough <impatient>

I'd never heard of the Jennings books. Golly gosh, I have a whole new series to order

Reading Anne to DC would be a nice thing to do actually. I very rarely read anything to them now as they are always so busy racing through books themselves.

You're right Grimma, that's what I meant by 'growing up' with Anne. Was reading the later ones for the first time as a sixth-former

Anne of Green gables is relatively untraumatic, but lovely Matthew dies at the end. My DD loves me to read classic books to her (while she devours age-apt JW) - there's very few of them I could get through without totally tearing up at points. Some of the later books in the Anne series are I think best kept till a bit later (we finished them up last year, DD is 12 now) - Anne loses a baby in one, various other deaths, then there's the rather odd plotline with her friend Leslie... and the last book, Rilla of Ingleside is set during WWI, I was actually very interested in some of the history but I wouldn't have wanted to read it to DD much younger.

Just William are fab as were Jennings and Darbyshire - if you remember them?

Scary thought re Marilla! I think that the fact you could 'grow up' with Anne as she became a teacher, married etc was part of the charm for me.

Thank you. The original Just William series was hit here so the dated language is fine. I wonder if I re-read them now if I would relate to Marilla or Anne? I'll dig them out this weekend.

I think the Anne books are the least traumatic of all this genre so, depending on the child, I would have thought around 10. She is an orphan, but that's just the device to get her to Avonlea - no wallowing in misery.

The language is pretty dated, but not too turgid and the scrapes she gets herself into are quite amusing,

I am biased as she is that rare childhood heroine - a fellow redhead, so I sympathised with her freckle trauma

*age I was when I first read them.

What age for the Anne books for? I really want my children to read them, and also love them so don't want to give too early. I can't remember what age I was.

Ah yes - the omnipresent wheelchair: What Katy Did, The Secret Garden and Heidi also featured some poor child confined to one as a plot device - and that's off the top of my head! And don't get me started on young deaths from TB - Little Women and Anne of Avonlea spring immediately
to mind!

Irony indeed My son just read Pollyanna and I asked him if it was a happy book, as I thought it was, and apparently Pollyanna ends up in a wheelchair!

Sorry - should read 'restricted' not restricting - why do I always end up with egg on my face when I'm being caustic

Re 'censoring' - my mother restricting our viewing very severely, while being proud of my literacy. I found some of the children's classics traumatising - I struggle to think of a hero/heroine who wasn't orphaned/abused/paralysed in some terrible accident - some all at the same time

Oh the irony of her forbidding me to see that notoriously immoral film 'Grease' while I was reading 'Lace' and 'The Thorn Birds' along with all my friends at convent school

At least we are being selective on the grounds of what we see for ourselves, and what our individual children can cope with, rather than on received 'wisdom'.