12 year old obsessed with Jacqueline Wilson books.. Aibu to think there is better out there?

Don't worry, I was obsessed with Guy de Maupassant at her age. Sounds awful, I know, my parents had words with me, but both Guy and Jaqueline are nothing like what they see online these days.

I was hoping she would be reading more educational books during the summer

Do you want to read education books when you're on holiday?

They seem appropriate topics, though I'd have been bored stiff by them. I wanted adventure, and swash-and-buckle at twelve, not angst in a bed-and-breakfast hotel. I still do prefer swash-and-buckle, come to think of it - am bored stiff by literary novels that explore a marriage etc.

I’d honestly be overjoyed if my 13 year old (and 10 year old) read anything without being nagged. When I take them to the library with me you should hear the moaning. I read some JW books to my daughter and quite enjoyed them.. I was a big Judy Blume fan back in the day though.

Sadly, the themes you've mentioned are relatable to a lot of children. If they are dealing with those situations, surely it's a good thing that a child in any of those circumstances knows they are not alone.

I remember reading the JW books obsessively as a child. I loved them and the fact they were topics/family situations usually avoided for children. I had a tricky childhood and it made me feel normal but I think they also showed me what like can be like for other children and opened eyes in a good way. There are a few I'd avoid- the Love Letters one about the relationship with a teacher and the Illustrated Mum with the suicide attempt. Probably some others too but those are the ones I remember being very full on.

I absolutely loved those books at that age. Didn't do me any harm

A lot of children go through those things in their childhood. I did, and it was so nice to read books that I could relate to.

Even for children who don't go through those things I think it's great that they can read about them to understand what some other children have experienced in life.

12 years old can easily have had to cope with divorce, or foster care etc though.
If it's written age appropriately, what's the problem?

Divorce, foster care, child abandonment, adoption, mental health issues. That kind of thing.

Maybe one of the previous posters above who say 12 is too old for JW and presume they’re all for primary age work there!

@aquaspot that particular book is one aimed at older readers. They really shouldn't have had it in a primary school library. Bit naughty of them.

I read and enjoyed E. Nesbit. I wanted to read about children who had different, more interesting, richer lives than I had, living in one-room accommodation and grotty flats in the London of the 50s and 60s. I learned to love history and also that there were other worlds I could aspire to outside the narrow confines of my life - although I did enjoy a book called 'Songbirds Grove' about a boy who lives in rented rooms and discovers that the steet he lives in is the last remaining work of an eighteenth century architect called Songbird, and saves it from demolition to be replaced by a tower block (helped along my ideas about art and architecture, too). I remember in the 70s you could suddenly get 'Nippers' which were about 'working-class' life; but they were not - they were middle-class ideas about working-class life. I suspect I might have liked some of Jacqueline Wilson's books - I never came across Judy Blume except possibly 'Hello God, It's Me, Margaret' and the title would have put me off, I'm afraid. I wanted adventure and derring-do, conspiracies in Italian courts, adventures in the debatable lands of Westmorland and Dumfriesshire etc. Books about kids on an estate with money and parent problems would never have appealed - boring, and I knew all about that, thanks, and wanted to get away from it, both figuratively and literally.

My DD came back with one from the school library when she was in year 5 and it was about a student-teacher relationship - I’m very glad I saw it and read the back before she read it!

JW writes books for different age groups, from younger children to teens.

I was a child in the 1950's too and thought them dull

I loved E Nesbit as a child. But i would have liked to read about children living the kind of life I did. Back then children's books were always middle class families.

I recall my two devouring the Judy Blume books, they were the very popular ones then, before JW I think.

The sort of kid who likes history would like E Nesbit, I think. And understand they are contemporary novels - which is a good thing to understand for later study of literature.
Dodie Smith is 30s so less likely to be readable now than books written at the turn of the last century. Distance adds charm - I thought Dodie Smith old-fashioned in the early 60s. E Nesbit I understood was writing in a quite different time-zone as well as about a different social class from mine.

I’m a JW fan but I know some people don’t like topics she covers like divorce, domestic abuse, foster care, abandonment, parents having toxic boyfriends/girlfriend etc.

Can someone please enlighten me as to what the inappropriate subjects in JW books are? We are not at that stage/age yet, so I’d love to know what to expect. TIA

I loved E Nesbit when I was a child, but I was a child in the 1950s and the world has changed quite a lot since then.

Actually mine hated E Nesbit (and Harry Potter actually). They read Secret Garden and tried to read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and then found their own books. I don't think kids particularly like Nesbit - they find her old-fashioned. Dodie Smith has also fallen out of favour.

Mine have been reading Anime/Manga and teaching themselves Japanese for the last couple of years!

I might have read them at 12 but if the OP is worried about Jacqueline Wilson she's definitely not going to want her child reading One of Us Is Lying 😅 (they are great books though).

Be happy she's not trolling the streets doing far less appropriate activities than reading. Lots of 12 yrs old will be hanging round shopping centres and parks doing gkw.

No books have been banned by any libraries or schools here in Maine that I know of, though I can't of course answer for individual home-schoolers. But we are a fairly liberal New England state and it tends to be the red states where that happens.