Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Most traumatic Jacqueline Wilson book?

212 replies

Msblueskies · 05/10/2023 13:54

Lighthearted… those who grew up on JW books in the 90s and 2000s which book was the most traumatic for you?

In my early 30s now and I absolutely adored all my JW books. But looking back a lot of the content was pretty dark 😅 I think for me Dustin Baby wins the prize for darkest and most traumatic at all. I read it at age 10!

OP posts:
MyMitMoo · 05/10/2023 22:20

There's one I vividly remember, where the next door neighbours little girl is abused by her perfectionist mum, she has to stay pristine like a doll and the mum cuts her nails too short that they bleed and then I think she tries to copy a bird and fly away so she jumps out of her bedroom window. She's ok in the end but the imagery always stuck with me.

Also as chubby pre-teen kid, the girls out late character Ellie feeling fat and it being the key theme that seemed to consume her and affect every aspect of her life - it honestly was a light-bulb moment that perhaps I too.should feel disgusting and hate my body as I was chubby, but it had genuinely never crossed my mind before that I shouldn't be happy and confident. Now I probably would have felt like that at some point anyway but I do remember those books (that I was probably too immature for) pulled a lot of issues to the surface for me.
I still loved her books though!

BarelyCoping123 · 05/10/2023 22:25

Good lord! I didn't grow up in the UK so I've never read any JW - reading this thread, they sound absolutely horrific! My DD has read some, I'll need to speak to her about them, she's very sensitive and I had no idea what was in these books!

Vistada · 05/10/2023 22:28

The Lottie Project!

Read it so many times

purpleme12 · 05/10/2023 22:37

This thread is making me think I'd better read her books before I give them to my child

Robotik · 05/10/2023 22:42

Anyone able to find the lola rose sequel?

LaMadameCholet · 05/10/2023 22:49

Lessstressedhemum · 05/10/2023 20:23

The illustrated Mum is awful. So traumatising. Lola Rose, too. My 23 year old DD is still haunted by Dustbin Baby.

My Dad suffered from bipolar depression and reading the Illustrated Mum really helped and comforted me.

Original poster
Msblueskies · 05/10/2023 22:50

I remember the ‘Girls’ series, Ellie and her friends were only supposed to be year 8/9 as well if I remember correctly! Very dodgy

@Robotik I’ve had a look and can’t find anything so wondering whether PP was getting it confused with something else :(

OP posts:
HairyToity · 05/10/2023 22:51

Lily Alone

Scenekidfringe · 05/10/2023 22:54

The suitcase kid back in the mid 90s when my parents divorced. We moved so I was separated from my best friend and I really saw alot of myself in that book. I also wanted a pet rabbit and to name him radish.

MyBigFatCapybara · 05/10/2023 23:37

BeeHumbert · 05/10/2023 21:09

Okay but Girls under pressure was definitely the mist traumatic, didn't know it was a kids book when my grandad gave it to me. There's a huge paragraph where the main character details sticking ehr finger down her throat to make her throw up so child me essentially discovered bulimia.

Also has anyone read her newest teen book? The one where the fourteen year old gets raped by a French man and gets pregnant and is sent away because its the sixties?

I'm sorry about your bulimia. I struggle !myself with ED, but have done since early childhood. That book is definitely more for teens than kids. The whole Girls series is.

Yes I did read that one about the teen pregnancy, Baby Love it was called. Very sad and especially so because it really happened to young unwed mothers back then.

MyBigFatCapybara · 05/10/2023 23:39

Titicacacandle · 05/10/2023 20:27

Was there one about a mulberry tree and a child going between her parents. That one made my cry a lot as I was also going between mine.

The Suitcase Kid.

ttcchapter2 · 05/10/2023 23:44

There was one called Candyfloss or something when the dad owns a cafe and the mum moves away or something? I remember getting the very pretty pink hardback book.

MyBigFatCapybara · 05/10/2023 23:46

Does anyone else like the older JW books that she wrote in the 70s/80s? I think Waiting For The Sky to Fall was my favourite. I enjoyed Amber, The Dream Palace and This Girl. So many of these can be found on ebay.

KeiraKnightley2 · 05/10/2023 23:58

Illustrated Mum

Latenightreader · 05/10/2023 23:59

I’ve just read the sequel to The Sleepovers (The Best Sleepover in the World) where the older sister has learned Makaton and is a more active part of the story. I also enjoyed The Primrose Railway Children - a retelling of The Railway Children set on a heritage railway (having worked on one the details were good). I like Queenie too (1953, girl in a TB hospital) and thought the Katy book was very good once she had had the accident, a bit too derivative before.

I read a couple of her early books as a teen in the 90s and found them more traumatic, then rediscovered them as an adult.

I remember watching a tv film of Dustbin Baby a few years ago. I remember it being good but the casting didn’t fit with my image of the characters.

Luddite26 · 06/10/2023 06:42

Illustrated Mum still haunting. I remember a proper treat morning when it came on TV and we should have been doing stuff and we watched that. It made me really like Michelle Collins she really set me on edge.
I will have to ask dd's there thoughts as I was an adult!
We are still massive Beaker fans and watch with the GCs.
I have read the new TB books too and when I finished I cried for about half an hour mourning poor Tracy's shit life ! But I hope who she seems to get with in the end she stays with and they all live happily ever after I really couldn't cope with it if she writes another and It doesn't work out.
I remember rushing to a book signing one evening and queueing in a huge line with youngest DD when she was probably about 8. I think the book she signed was Candy Floss!

Poudretteite · 06/10/2023 08:21

I loved JW books as I was going through a traumatic childhood myself and found them very comforting! I loved the one about the girl who befriends a girl across the street in foster care, can't remember what it's called.

Original poster
Msblueskies · 06/10/2023 10:35

The Suitcase Kid.. not only did the parents divorce but pretty much immediately both shacked up with new partners who had their own kids full-time, the girl stayed alternate weeks at each house and no bedroom of her own.

OP posts:
Saschka · 06/10/2023 10:47

Beezknees · 05/10/2023 22:02

See, I had a fairly chaotic childhood that continued into adulthood and devoured JW books because I didn't want to read about perfect families, I wanted to read about kids like me. I lived in a hostel for a bit which reminded me of the bed and breakfast star! And my mum suffers with her mental health like the illustrated mum. Love Lessons was shocking to me though!

Oh yeah this is definitely an “I was sheltered and too emotionally young to understand what was happening without it being spelled out” issue, not an issue with the books.

EllieQ · 06/10/2023 10:49

MyBigFatCapybara · 05/10/2023 23:46

Does anyone else like the older JW books that she wrote in the 70s/80s? I think Waiting For The Sky to Fall was my favourite. I enjoyed Amber, The Dream Palace and This Girl. So many of these can be found on ebay.

Yes, I really enjoyed these. Would like to reread them as an adult as I don’t remember much of them. There was one where the main character ends up going to auditions for a role in King Lear and ends up playing Lear - do you remember that one?

They seemed quite different from JW’s later books - more for older teenagers than pre-teens/ early teens.

kaylangrish · 06/10/2023 11:09

I have been waiting for a thread like this,

As an aside, there are so many creepy undertones in a lot of her books, specifically around dads and the teenage friends of their daughters (specifically the dad in Vicky Angel - at one point he picks up a photo of Vicky "Like he's going to kiss it" and Jade mentions how uncomfortable it makes her. Ellie's dad in the girls series has a strange fixation with one of her friends), I think someone has also mentioned the relationship in Midnight between Violet and her brother.

I adored JW as a child, but looking back on her books some of them were not child-friendly. I think most have already been mentioned but here are the main things that stick in my mind from those books.

Vicky Angel - Not only is there the tragedy of her friend but her mum is cheating on her dad with a married man and Jade finds out about it.

Girls series - One of them gets catfished online by a much older man, one is sexually assaulted by her boyfriend and another develops an eating disorder. As a child, it was pretty much an instruction manual on how to lose weight, it never quite sat right with me that there were no resources at the end of the book for young girls who may have been struggling.

The Longest Whale song - has a moment where the main character is pretending to be a whale at her school swimming lesson (?) and everyone assumes she was trying to drown herself

The worst thing about my sister - actually quite tame as JW books go, however, there is a scene where the two sisters are arguing and one kicks the other off a bunk bed ladder and she falls (but is ok by the end of the book if I remember rightly)

Little Darlings - Two girls who are half-sisters and the daughter of an ageing rock star. The dad runs off with a 19 (?) year old, one lives on an estate in Manchester and her single mum has suspected cancer so is desperate for her daughter to meet her dad so she'll be looked after. The dad is also kind of emotionally abusive.

Kiss - Main character is in love with her friend, who is gay. He collects glass and after he is outed at school he smashes his entire glass collection and ends up in hospital. She also makes friends with one of the popular girls who sends a nude to someone and it gets leaked...I don't remember what the outcome of that was but it was pretty traumatic.

Most of the other books have been explained but yeah, some of these I haven't read but have seen the adaptations which have stuck with me (DUSTBIN BABY)

salamithumbs · 06/10/2023 11:42

Poudretteite · 06/10/2023 08:21

I loved JW books as I was going through a traumatic childhood myself and found them very comforting! I loved the one about the girl who befriends a girl across the street in foster care, can't remember what it's called.

Think that one was Bad Girls!

CapturedLeprechaun · 06/10/2023 11:43

ALL OF THEM

Vicky Angel - causes her best friend to die in a car accident while they were arguing, then hallucinates her best friend

The Cat Mummy - she mummified her own cat. Wtf.

My sister Jodie - sister falls from a tower and dies (and is also a 14yr old in a relationship with a 19yr old)

The illustrated mum - mum has a mental breakdown, covers herself in paint, kids are placed in foster care

The dustbin baby - dumped in a bin when she was a baby

Love lessons - a 14yr old in a relationship with her TEACHER

Queenie - she gets tuberculosis. Her nan gets tuberculosis.

Bed and breakfast star - is homeless and living in a motel with mum & abusive stepfather, which then burns down with them inside

Diamond girls - her friend jumps out of a window because she is being abused by her mum

Secrets - hides her abused friend in an attic

I'm sure there are more!

OMGTTC · 06/10/2023 11:48

Titicacacandle · 05/10/2023 20:27

Was there one about a mulberry tree and a child going between her parents. That one made my cry a lot as I was also going between mine.

Was that the Suitcase Kid? Was there a lovely neighbour who whittled tiny furniture for the main character’s toy to live in the tree?

I think the stepmum in that book made orange jelly out of actual oranges and the character hates it because it’s not with the cubes from the packet - I’ve no idea why that sticks in my memory 😄

OMGTTC · 06/10/2023 11:50

kaylangrish · 06/10/2023 11:09

I have been waiting for a thread like this,

As an aside, there are so many creepy undertones in a lot of her books, specifically around dads and the teenage friends of their daughters (specifically the dad in Vicky Angel - at one point he picks up a photo of Vicky "Like he's going to kiss it" and Jade mentions how uncomfortable it makes her. Ellie's dad in the girls series has a strange fixation with one of her friends), I think someone has also mentioned the relationship in Midnight between Violet and her brother.

I adored JW as a child, but looking back on her books some of them were not child-friendly. I think most have already been mentioned but here are the main things that stick in my mind from those books.

Vicky Angel - Not only is there the tragedy of her friend but her mum is cheating on her dad with a married man and Jade finds out about it.

Girls series - One of them gets catfished online by a much older man, one is sexually assaulted by her boyfriend and another develops an eating disorder. As a child, it was pretty much an instruction manual on how to lose weight, it never quite sat right with me that there were no resources at the end of the book for young girls who may have been struggling.

The Longest Whale song - has a moment where the main character is pretending to be a whale at her school swimming lesson (?) and everyone assumes she was trying to drown herself

The worst thing about my sister - actually quite tame as JW books go, however, there is a scene where the two sisters are arguing and one kicks the other off a bunk bed ladder and she falls (but is ok by the end of the book if I remember rightly)

Little Darlings - Two girls who are half-sisters and the daughter of an ageing rock star. The dad runs off with a 19 (?) year old, one lives on an estate in Manchester and her single mum has suspected cancer so is desperate for her daughter to meet her dad so she'll be looked after. The dad is also kind of emotionally abusive.

Kiss - Main character is in love with her friend, who is gay. He collects glass and after he is outed at school he smashes his entire glass collection and ends up in hospital. She also makes friends with one of the popular girls who sends a nude to someone and it gets leaked...I don't remember what the outcome of that was but it was pretty traumatic.

Most of the other books have been explained but yeah, some of these I haven't read but have seen the adaptations which have stuck with me (DUSTBIN BABY)

Wasn’t Ellie’s dad’s partner also an ex-student of his? 😬