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

Yes to PP who finds JW books depressing and samey. Almost verging on parody. I can see why children in similar circumstances might want to read them, but otherwise it’s a bit like reading misery memoirs. I wanted a bit of escapism at that age.

I was talking about books like Anne of Green Gables not JW

I read one or two when I was younger. Didn't think much of them in isolation but when I started looking for books for my 7 year old I started looking at JW and it feels like there's a thread of kids who have shitty things happen to them throughout all her books. Whilst it's not that I'm about to pearl clutch about it being inappropriate, it just all feels depressing and samey and very much like she was trying to make a point. Maybe when she's 11 or 12 I'll feel differently but I just don't think she'd understand it all now (I only looked as she's got a slightly higher reading age so I thought the language/length would be good but not the content for now)

I was utterly obsessed with Jacqueline Wilson at 12 and read English lit at Oxford at 18 so I don't think it did me any harm! I still love Jacqueline Wilson now, literally just finished a re-read of her Girls in Love series in preparation for her latest book coming out!

See if she likes 'I Capture The Castle' by Dodie Smith. Brilliant book for teen girls, and it's a classic (she also wrote '101 Dalmations')

You’re being very unreasonable. It’s called “reading for pleasure” for a reason…

Let her enjoy them

I loved the sweet valley high & babysitters club too! Did your parents give you a hard time for reading these?

Can't understand why someone who read SVH would be concerned about their kid reading JW.

You know what I was reading at 12? Danielle Steele books. So many beautiful eighteen year old girls having torrid love affairs with their fathers friends and their friends fathers.

But it was a phase, and it passed. And by the time I was fourteen I had moved on to some really good books with real literary merit. It's all part of the process of becoming a lifelong reader. Tastes evolve. And literature is generally a fairly safe way for young people to begin feeling out where they stand on things.

I'm close to 70 now so the reviled author of my childhood was Enid Blyton, whose books I devoured. Relax, don't comment on her choices, and be glad she loves reading.
Reading with children is great, as is modelling enthusiasm for books by your own reading.

I agree. There’s some great children’s historical books out there too but it’s also important for children to engage with contemporary fiction and I say that as someone who read a lot of Enid Blyton and Anne of Green Gables in the 90s but then I also read the Babysitters Club and Goosebumps and Point Horror. Also read some children’s and adults classics too that were a lot more wordy and challenging and they also had their place.

But I just loved the escapism and easy reading style of contemporary fiction and it helped me remain an avid reader. I was very academic too and a bit of a worrier, I think that may be why I leaned towards not reading books that were too “challenging” all the time.

A lot of kids don’t read at all, so within reason as long as they’re reading it’s a good thing.they will still benefit from it.

Oh try her on some Diana Wynne Jones eg Howl’s Moving Castle, they have some family drama but also magic.

I got obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and the like at 12, that’ll knock her socks off after Robin Stevens.

@meandkarmavibe JW is still writing new books so there's plenty for "contemporary" children.

I don't really see why, I grew up in the 90s so I was already pretty far removed from the lives of Sara Crewe and Anne of Green Gables, but I still loved them. They just require a bit more concentration than Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Tracy Beaker and I definitely think concentration spans are going down. Mine certainly has done and it's a vicious cycle; the more time you spend chasing short term dopamine highs on a screen the harder it is to read or do something which requires concentration.

I loved all those books as a child but I just don’t think it’s realistic for a contemporary child to love them – I read them to my own kids and on the whole they left them pretty cold. As I said up thread one of them is reading English at Oxford now, though I do appreciate she has yet to obtain a Harvard PhD and win a Nobel prize do by Mzn standards is a loser 😂

I am not familiar with JW, but I see from this thread that she wrote Tracey Beaker. My DS wouldn't read, but he liked TB on the telly when he was about 10. He was adopted and although some of the themes were a bit old for him, it did prompt conversations around his own circumstances, which was useful.

I was reading James Herbert at her age!

My daughter devoured Jacqueline Wilson books. Now she doesn’t read at all.

id love to see her nose deep in a book again.

I agree it’s a bit limiting. Dd10 has been obsessed with JW since she was 8, barely reads anything else and rereads them a lot too. She does read a lot but I I feel she’s not moved on for a couple of years and should read some more challenging books - something longer and more varied in storyline and vocabulary. I do encourage new authors but JW is the main author.

if she’s had a phase before, I guess she will move on to another author at some point!

YABVU.

I had a fairly chaotic childhood and JW books were the only books that were remotely relatable to me. They're brilliant.

I'm an adult and I'm not interested in reading historical books let alone a 12 year old!

I don't get why people are so snobby about reading. Why do books have to be educational? They can just be enjoyment. Presumably you don't only let her watch documentaries on TV? Reading nothing but JW for a few months is still vastly better than virtually any screen based entertainment. I really wouldn't say anything to put her off.

There are loads of beautifully written historical children's books though.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, LM Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott and E Nesbit were firm favourites of mine before I was 12 and I do think it is a shame if children "age out" of the storylines before being ready for the prose.

My DD poured over JW books at this age, then moved onto Cathy Cassidy. She has a very wide range of reading genres, nothing wrong with JW!