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

[Breakdancing]

My 12 year old has come back from the library with another stack of Jacqueline Wilson books. I've flicked through some & they are mildly inappropriate but are in the young readers section.. I love that she is a bookworm but aibu to be annoyed with her obsession with Jacqueline Wilson?

Just be glad that she is reading. Better to read something she enjoys than drag home a pile of classics she won't.

Could be worse she could be reading flowers in the attic like me at that age , my own dd read loads of jacqueline wilson I still have them , they are completely inappropriate looking back . Youngest daughter is horrified by the storylines

Me and my sister were obsessed with JW! A little part of me still is 🙈 my mum was the exact same in that she was fed up of seeing us read her books and the story lines… try not to worry, your daughter will branch out eventually!

Heh yes, scarred for life but I still read every book in the series and beyond.... Mum had no idea.

She would see and hear far worst scrolling through Tik tok all day

My DD went through a Jacqueline Wilson phase. I read a few of them to her and I thought they were much better written than, say, the Rainbow Fairy series she was into before then.

She's reading, which is a great thing! You'd be surprised what most 12 year olds out there get obsessed with!

There is nothing wrong with it

DD1 went through a phase of it at about 10/11 - I just gritted teeth, screened out the ones aimed at an older audience and eventually she moved on to other stuff.

Now she insists on carrying around ALL the Percy Jackson books in her school backpack in case she gets an idle 2 minutes between lessons! At least the Jacqueline Wilson ones were lighter in weight!

Jacqueline Wilson is actually a brilliant writer, with storylines that can be problematic but that’s part of what makes them good. She doesn’t resort to easy, lazy solutions for her characters or plots.

By all means encourage her to explore different authors but I do think JW has a rare gift.

My mom read them after 😆 🤣 she was horrified

Ohhh I LOVED JW books as a kid and I've turned out ok.. I think 😆

I wish more kids would read 😩

Try to widen her reading choices, maybe The Wee Free Men series, she might like them.

Dd1 who is nearly 10 loves the JW books, I just make sure she doesn't read the ones aimed at a slightly older audience. At 12 I read a lot of Judy Blume and borrowed Junk from the library a lot, the one about heroin addiction in teens. 12 year old reading slightly inappropriate books is not new. I think JW writes really well about the topics kids want to read about, that's why she has been a successful author for decades.

Yeah, you are bring a little unreasonable.

I say this because I was like your daughter, at that age, but I was obsessed with Agatha Christie.

To be honest, I'm still like that now. I find an author I like and will read everything they have written; Martina Cole, Patricia Cornwell etc.

Are there better writers? Of course. But that is the great thing about being a reader, you read, you learn, you then find authors who are better.

I can see the similarities to people who watch TV series year after year, Eastenders, Coronation Street, Breaking Bad, Line of Duty etc.

Are there better TV programmes? of course, but if someone is enjoying it, let them be.

I think it’s a right of passage for bookworm pre-teen girls to have a JW phase!
I was absolutely obsessed with her at that age. I was even a member of her fan club! Honestly in this day and age I’d probably keep encouraging her love of reading and if that means reading JW books then so be it. She will branch out eventually.

I think a lot of YA fiction has storylines you might think were inappropriate. They tend to be 'problem' novels where the characters face various gritty issues. Jacqueline Wilson is very good at writing them and tends to challenge stereotypes in a not-too-obvious way so I think they're fine. When I was 12 YA novels were not really a thing, so I was reading all sorts of way more inappropriate stuff (sci-fi, fantasy and horror mainly, but I remember innocently explaining to my RE teacher how the characters ritualise sex in the Handmaid's Tale...). Whereas at least JW and similar will be framing the content specifically for young readers.

I think her books are a load of tosh, just like the Walliams type writers. I don't really get the appeal (and I was an avid reader, still am) but as pp have said, there are worse things out there in the big bad world.

Let's hope it is a phase and she finds something more interesting and nourishing to read as she gets older. At 13 or so I was very into Sweet Valley High books, and earlier on loved Enid Blyton, but I have progressed...in fact took a literature degree after college 😂I still quite like Blyton - but only when she's edited to get rid of inappropriate names and racism.

It's good she's reading. Yes, there are lots of other books but JW isn't a bad choice. She tackles some tricky and upsetting topics ( I had to stop my DD reading JW as it was making her very anxious) but as an author she doesn't patronise her readers. She writes about bereavement, death and flaky parenting quite a lot. If your DD is a young 12 check the storylines.
It's also a phase and she'll find something else. The murder most unladylike series (wells and Wong) might appeal to her.if she hasn't read them yet.

That's a very good point! It drives me mad as she's very academic but is just obsessed with J. W.. I was hoping she would be reading more educational books during the summer 😩

Don’t get anyone thinking the content of JW books is inappropriate. Yes she deals with some gritty subjects but why sanitise everything for young teens? She isn’t five. I’d be delighted she was taking such an interest in reading tbh and not obsessed with tiktok and Instagram (where I can guarantee the content is MUCH less appropriate!!)

Oh ffs. She’s off school, give the poor girl a break.

I'd be happy she's reading at all tbh. At that age I was reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz and many other horror writers whose books aren't aimed at children. Mind you the amount of crap they see online nowadays probably makes stuff way less shocking than it used to be🤷

She's reading! Hurrah!

Dd has just finished the Percy Jackson phase 😂

My DD read every JW. Like a previous poster, I had read all of the Flowers in
the Attic so by that measure, JW was almost CBeebies 😂.

DD is now 20, very high achiever, still a bookworm, reads @ 80 books per annum, (and studies STEM , not literature!!) and has had no lasting trauma.

DD also loved Percy Jackson at that age, again a series of books, great stories and based on Greek mythology so some wider learning, if you want to suggest something different for her.