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?

OP, reading is meant to be an enjoyable leisure activity, and it's the summer holidays. Stop fretting about her reading habits and just let her relax.

I'm a very keen reader with a degree in English literature, a creative writing diploma and a book reviews blog, and my job consists primarily of copywriting and editing. I'm more than happy to read a weighty classic or a 'challenging' literary prize-winner. I'm also more than happy, however, to chill out in the sunshine with an easy and formulaic thriller. This year I've read Bleak House, Middlemarch and Notre Dame de Paris, but I also read a 12-book crime series with a will-they-won't-they detective pairing as the main characters, and I have not suffered any kind of intellectual decline as a result.

We don't expect adults to spend all their spare time on improving themselves, so we shouldn't be expecting kids to do it either. She's fine. Let her read what she likes.

As for Jacqueline Wilson being 'inappropriate' for a 12-year-old... she is literally Wilson's target audience. If anything she's maybe a little older. I think you need to unclutch your pearls here.

This is really funny. Fancy being cross your 12 year old is reading JW, the target demographic. Your dd sounds lovely and totally age appropriate in her reading!

I'd let her enjoy them while she can. It won't be long until GCSEs and A levels rear their ugly heads and beat any enjoyment of reading out of her. It's taken a fair while for my DD to read for pleasure again and my DS who was an avid reader has never got back into it although I still live in hope :(

At 12 we were reading erotic novels aloud to each other…..so I guess you’re lucky….

This makes me sound like the biggest MN arse of all time but I had a dc was obsessed with JW and is now reading English at Oxford so I wouldn't worry ...

What aspect of JW do you object to?

As in, you think she should be reading up on chemistry?

Or, you think she should be reading books for adults, as JW too easy?

Or that they're somehow inappropriate?

Or that the stories she reads should be more varied, rather than by the one author?

Or something else?

I don't get what your gripe is...

She’s reading; and for some kids/young people, JW books will be the first/only time they’ve encountered their experience in a book and it may give them the comfort/empowerment/‘you are not alone’ message they need.

It could be worse. I didn’t enjoy reading until I was 14 and discovered Jilly Cooper.

I wouldn't worry in the slightest. DD1 and 2 were both huge JW fans. They particularly loved the historical ones - Hetty Feather, Opal Plumstead etc - one dressed as Hetty for WBD, we went to the Foundling hospital, saw JW read a few times on book tours. DD1 wrote JW fanfic! They have both moved on. DD1 is doing English at Cambridge and DD2 has been writing about absurdist drama in her Personal Statement this am!

Trying to remember what I read at that age..

Audrey Rose
Flowers in the Attic and ALL the follow up books
But my main interest was actual true Ghost stories books .

I remember one called KINFLICKS , an American book, and boy was that Hot. I was about 15 then though and EVERYONE was reading Kinflicks loll

I should add that, despite the title, these are actually very funny, innocent, and age appropriate books! I remember feeling like someone had taken all the funniest moments with me and my best friends and written them down. Some of Louise Rennison's later books weren't quite as brilliant, but the first three Angus books were ones I went back to again and again.

Please remember that she's young; there's plenty of time for her to discover new genres and read "improving" books, but if this sort of thing is what's captured her imagination right now, great! Enjoy the fact that she's enjoying it 🙂

Reading fiction is a way to escape the mundane world and explore something different. The way characters deal with situations is a way of learning social skills, for example. It's learning by absorbing feelings, emotions and situations you probably hope not to be dealing with yourself. Children like to explore the harder stuff in a safe way which is why these kind of plots are so popular. They are educational without appearing to be.

My eldest daughter loved JW books, although her sisters didn't seem to read so much. I read Lily Alone to check it out first as she was a little young at the time she wanted it and it made me cry lol.

No, that’s very MN pedestrian.

My daughter read Jacqueline Wilson and is now a best-selling author, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Harvard and frankly a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize.

I was a massive JW fan as a child. My mum didn't approve of them (said they were sexist against men) but I wasn't an academic child at all much to her disappointment and she was glad I was reading at all

I'm horrified at the pedo teacher one though. Im sure that has to be out of print by now??

That is amazing
Well Done to your DD

Is she Lisa Jewell ? I ask as I love her books and bought a new one just Today. The Girls.

Snobbish and strange comments on this thread.

I read Jacqueline Wilson as a child. I’m still a voracious reader as an adult, and work as a writer, so it obviously didn’t hinder me.

My six year old reads Jacqueline Wilson. I don’t think they are inappropriate. They talk about real-life issues e.g., foster families. Anything my daughter doesn’t understand, she can chat about with me. Can’t abide the idea of certain books being inappropriate for children. I’d rather my kids learn about any topic through a book than the brain rot that is tiktok/social media.

I wouldn't say they are especially inappropriate for a 12 yo, they deal with many of the same themes you find in the secondary school RSE and PSCHE curriculums, but they are terribly written. I'm sure it's just a phase which will pass and she'll read something better one day.

Yet you’ve managed to come up with quite a few different possible t reasons, but you don’t understand the OP’s gripe. You are not coming across half as clever as you think you are.

Im not a fan of JW either OP. Reading the thread with interest.

this x 100

I read those. Along with Judy blum and Paula danziger. The less said about 'the babysitters club' the better. Not exactly Dostoyevsky is it.

I guess it's cool that kids now still read them though? I'm not familiar about current early teen authors I'm afraid.

Mizz magazine!

Ha ha blast from the past

Reminds me of Just 17 and the much more racy More! magazine with its 'position of the fortnight'...lol we were 15/16 and not having sex with anyone

Yes ffs let her enjoy it.

My mother was like this. Hated me liking stuff she didn't like and tried to put me off it.

It only intensified my interest.

Be pleased that she's reading at all, even if it is JW. Fair to say that one of my DSs had to read one of hers (Tracy Beaker?) in Y6 and had to be dissuaded from writing an extremely sarcastic review for his homework.

Back in the day, though, they didn't have YA books. I dimly remember reading historical novels, science fiction and the odd classic (Jane Eyre, I think) at that age.

No. Her work is a sort of creative cross-over of Jackie Collins and Pam Ayres. It’s very niche.

I was obsessed with Enid Blyton as a kid and my family had to endure hours of me pretending I lived in a boarding school (dad was the gardener, mum was matron etc). There are some very unfashionable views in those books but I’ve turned out alright.
As others have said; she’s reading and that’s a good thing. I love John Grisham books now. Hardly stretches my brain but that’s partly the appeal.