“So good, it’s exhilarating”: The Jacqueline Wilson Phenomenon

When I ask classes of 11-year- olds about their favourite authors, Jacqueline Wilson’s name invariably tops the list. Since 1991 when The Story of Tracy Beaker was published, Wilson’s popularity has steadily increased and in the twenty-first century she has become the most widely-read author by girls between the ages of 8 and 14 years, both in Britain and elsewhere. She has written more than 100 books, of which over 30 million copies have been sold in the UK alone, and her work is translated into 34 different languages. She was the most borrowed author from libraries in the last decade, and in the BBC’s 2003 The Big Read poll, four of her titles were voted into the top 100 most popular books in Britain. Thirteen of her books have been adapted as plays for theatre or television since 2002 and Tracy Beaker is an ongoing television series. Marketing spinoffs, such as pencil cases, duvet covers, lampshades, diaries, continue to proliferate, and book-signings are a major media event; she is, in the words of the Independent newspaper, a “literary superstar.”

Moreover Wilson’s achievement is not measured merely by popularity; since 2000, she has won many independently judged awards, including the Smarties Prize, British Book Awards Book of the Year (twice), Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, and Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year. In 2002 she was awarded an OBE for services to literacy in schools; she was the UK’s fourth Children’s Laureate from 2005 to 2007; and in 2008 she became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the first children’s author to be so honoured. She holds “this handful of honorary doctorates” in recognition of her services in and on behalf of children’s literature, and the quality of her work is acknowledged by peers as well as fans.¹ In the words of Philip Pullman, her writing is “So good, it’s exhilarating.”

Ultimately, however, it is the readers who sustain the Wilson phenomenon, ensuring that she remains second only to her friend J.K. Rowling in the book-sales stakes. The bases of Wilson’s appeal are her accessibility, which is linked to her narrative voice, her use of humour, her depiction of ordinary lives, and her determination to tackle issues that children care about. All her books published since the millennium are written in the first person voice of a child narrator, usually the central character. The voice is childlike without being childish and dispenses with any adult reflection, and, in particular, a moralising stance, that would limit the impact of the stories. This subject position of “childness” (Hollindale) ensures that Wilson writes from a simple, yet subtle juvenile point of view which is largely non-judgemental and encourages reader identification. Furthermore, Wilson’s narrators, whatever their problems, tend to be creative writers (Clean Break), storytellers (Hetty Feather), and artists (Cookie). They offer aspirational positions for the reader and, since these talents frequently contribute to an ultimate solution to their problems, empowerment for both protagonist and reader.

Wilson’s use of humor, alongside the realism, is a hallmark of her writing, whether it is a character’s determination to tell jokes (The Bed and Breakfast Star), or, more usually, finding comedy within the situation—wearing the wrong frilly dress to a party (The Worst Thing about my Sister), or harbouring absurd fantasies about an absent parent (The Dare Game). Her deliberate use of “humour as a way of coping with sad things” is an important aspect of her appeal, as the many online reviews from readers attest.

Her realistic settings and eye for the detail of children’s ordinary lives enables her readers to “cognitively map” (Jameson 347) their social world, even if the circumstances depicted are outside their personal experience. In today’s media-dominated society, children are well aware of the plight of others when families fracture; issues such as domestic violence, neglectful or absent parents, bereavement and serious illness (all depicted in Wilson’s work), are...