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?

It's her choice to read them, she loves them so leave her alone. It's better she reads JW than those revolting Mills & Boon crap! And at least she's reading a physical book instead of mucking about on tablets or stuck in front of senseless rubbish on the telly!

I'm 59 now but have loved horror and psycho films and books since aged 5 when I saw my first horror film and I was ALWAYS been shouted at by teachers and others for reading such things instead of ''girls books''.

Just let her read what she wants, whether its JW or really deep dark Shakespeare or anything, she's expanding her mind and learning!

I love the Jo Nesbo Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder and other DP ones, they're hilarious and I'm a fully grown adult!

Omg I was born in 1994 and obsessed with Jacqueline Wilson books, the the themes are more geared to pre teen.

A Town Called Perfect is great!

One of Us Is Lying isn't really for 12 year olds though - unless there's another series with the same name?

As everyone's saying - she's reading. That's good.

But as it's come up, can I recommend AS King. Some say she's the best writers for kids currently working. Me, I'd say she's just a great writer, however old you are.

I read a lot of them at a similar age, and some of them have stuck with me for entirely the wrong reasons! Some were very graphic in terms of descriptions, and there was one, I forget the title, that went on at great length and detail, about the physical abuse of a girl by her step-father (I think). Up to that point I think it was one of the most violent things I'd ever read.
I progressed from them to Virginia Andrews and Danielle Steel, who are both pretty problematic in their own way!

@RedOnyx You are probably right - I just let mine read anything in the teen section.

I always think JKR (whose stance on women's rights I wholly support - great woman!) is the equivalent of Enid Blyton. Her tales, like Blyton's, do not conceal the magic from e.g. the Dursleys, and the magic is accepted and used by all the adults, they being wizards and witches - her parallel universe does not hide in plain sight, it sort of wriggles through reality in ways that must be cleared up by magic occasionally. Edith Nesbit, on the other hand, has the magic concealed, the world of the children is a private world that meets the adult world only on occasion. For example, there is a bit in 'Five Children and It' where angels' wings are requested and a man sees the children flying, thus giving him a spiritual experience leading to him being nice to his wife. There is also the horrific moment in 'The Enchanted Castle' where dummies come to life - the children pass it off as using strings; luckily only servants saw this (Nesbit's attitude to servants is Victorian but does illustrate how early 'socialists' saw the working classes, which is of interest in itself). Apart from these examples (which are central parts of the plot) the magic is in parallel entirely so that, again in 'Five Children and It', the children inhabit a besieged castle whilst the servants go on with preparing lunch around them. Nesbit definitely writes better than Blyton or JKR in 'Harry Potter' (and had as peculiar and unsettling a home life as Blyton partly expressed in her books, for the children are frequently left to their own devices by busy or absent parents) and I would recommend her books to yr 6 and yr 7 children (DD - well beyond those years - still reads them). JKR is better in the Strike books, but still involved in convoluted plots (not something I care to criticise, since I like complex plots).

So what happens if a school or library bans a book? Does it mean it just can't be read or borrowed at those places or does it mean you can't get that book in that town at all?

I find it fascinating how strong reactions are to some books that they want them banned!

It just means it can't be read or borrowed in those places. It's ridiculous and is probably responsible for a lot of best-sellers. Also remember that a lot of conservative Christian home-schoolers effectively do the same thing but of course that's an individual decision.

Quite. I'd imagine the banning of a boom makes most,if not all, people want to buy or borrow it, not leave it well alone!

Have any books been banned in your state?

My 12 year old is in a similar phase. I like JW - well written, interesting characters. Also introducing her to concepts like foster care or having shit parents that she won't be learning through real life right now. I always ask what she is reading and try to discuss some of the themes with her.

She used to read pure waffle - like Rainbow fairies! So I thought it was a win.

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.

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.

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).

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 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.

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’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.

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

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

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 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.