Tacking Taboos: Why Jacqueline Wilson is One of My Inspirations to this Day

By Lydia Pearson

I haven’tAs a twenty-one year old writer, if you asked me about writing inspirations, I'd have a few names to give you. 

Here's just one of them. 

(Warning: spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk). 

On May 23rd, 2023, I had the honour of meeting my lifelong idol, the author who made my childhood with her books. I read her books so much that, at my primary school, they asked me to read more books by other authors to diversify my writing. She came to Kirkham, in the county I live in (Lancashire). As lifelong fans of hers, my partner and I were incredibly excited to meet her. The author we met that day was a sweet older woman with short, white hair, who complimented my partner’s name and made his whole life with one comment alone. You wouldn’t think, then, that such a lovely lady would write about anything taboo, anything daring, anything controversial. You’d be wrong. 

The author I speak of is Dame Jacqueline Wilson. 

A renowned children's author in the UK, Jacqueline Wilson has been writing professionally for decades. Her lesser-known earlier works, published by Oxford University Press in the 1980s and early 1990s, are pretty dark, gritty and realistic YA novels, such as Waiting for the Sky to Fall (1984) and The Dream Palace (1991). She also published crime novels during this time, such as Let's Pretend (1977). 

It makes sense for content targeted towards young adults to deal with realism and dark topics (such as crime, violence, teen pregnancy and abortion). Yet, beginning from her famously adapted debut children's novel, The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991), Wilson devoted her writing to tackling topics which are typically taboo and rarely touched upon in children's books. 

The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991) follows the story of the titular protagonist, Tracy, and her experiences in the foster care system. Stories about kids in foster care were not common back then, and are not common now. Tracy suffers from nightmares, attempts to run away, and struggles to connect with others. 

She has a famous temper, but she can hardly be blamed, given the circumstances she comes from-it turns out that the birth mother she idolises initially was neglectful towards her, prioritising her boyfriends over her own daughter, and it is suggested that at least one of her mother's boyfriends are abusive towards Tracy. 

This book is far from the first of Wilson's to explore the theme of abuse. Her novel, Cookie (2009) follows the story of a young girl whose father is abusive towards her mother, and controlling towards her. This is also the case in her YA novel, Love Lessons (2005), which she has gone on record to say she would not write today due to a teacher-student relationship being depicted. 

The book which explores abuse more explicitly is Lola Rose (2003). Jayni, her younger brother Kenneth, and her mother Nikki, are forced to escape from her abusive father, Jay, when he hits Jayni for the first time. They move, using lottery money, and change their names. The children start at a new school, and things go okay-until Nikki falls ill with cancer, and is given a 50/50 chance to live. 

This is another topic which Wilson explores, seemingly without fear-illness. Lola Rose is far from the only Jacqueline Wilson book to explore illness. Set in 1953, Queenie (2013) is about eight-year-old Elsie Kettle, who comes down with tuberculosis. Her mother is not great, but she has a close relationship with her Nan, who is also ill with tuberculosis. 

In The Longest Whale Song, eight-year-old Ella has to deal with her mother, Sue Winters, being in a coma due to complications during her labour. The nurses seem to almost give up on Sue, but Ella and her stepfather, Jack, never do, and become closer while Sue is in hospital. The titular protagonist in Katy (2015), an adaptation of Susan Coolidge's 1872 children's novel, What Katy Did, spends time in hospital after falling off a swing and permanently disabling herself. Being of a tomboyish nature, eleven-year-old Katy is devastated that she can no longer run around, but comes to adapt to her disability and ultimately accept it as a part of her lived reality. 

Several other books of Wilson's feature characters staying in hospital. In The Worst Thing About My Sister (2012), the ten-year-old protagonist Marty's sister, twelve-year-old Melissa, breaks her leg after an argument between them and ends up in hospital. In Lily Alone (2011), which was my favourite book as a child, eleven-year old Lily's six-year-old sister, Bliss, ends up in hospital after falling out of a tree and breaking her leg, in Lily's care. At the end of The Diamond Girls (2004), Dixie Diamond, the ten-year-old main character, goes into a coma after saving her six-year-old neighbour, Mary, from falling to her death, taking on her full weight and hitting her head on the ground and wakes up in hospital, surrounded by her family. 

The Diamond Girls also depicts parental mental illness, as her mother is implied to be dealing with Postpartum depression, pretending her fifth child is a boy and not a girl (she has four daughters already) and struggling to function. Mary's mother also suffers from it, and attempts to control Mary as a result. Another book of Wilson's Wilson's depicting parental mental ilThe Illustrated Mumlness is The Illustrated Mum (1999). It is heavily implied that the ten-year-old main character Dolphin’s mother, Marigold, suffers from Bipolar, although I believe that some of her tendencies are more similar to those seen in BPD. She ends up in hospital after painting over her tattoos in white paint. In spite of this, she is still depicted as a loving mother, regardless of her mental health struggles.

One topic Wilson is asked about being afraid to tackle is death. Writing about death in children’s books, as with other difficult topics, needs to be handled carefully. Done with tact, and sensitivity. She explores the loss of a best friend in her novel for slightly older readers, Vicky Angel, about fourteen-year-old Jade’s grief in the wake of the death of her best friend (her friend died in a car accident, in front of her). Her trauma is depicted clearly, and it became apparent upon my recent re-read as an adult that Jade is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, not necessarily due to her age (as is the case with Wilson’s younger characters), but because she is traumatised and struggling with depression as a result of the loss of her closest friend. I feel Wilson did this well, and gave it a hopeful ending, as she always does in her books. 

And then, there’s the Jacqueline Wilson death scene that readers my age will remember, from the Jacqueline Wilson book I have re-read most recently. 

The death of Jodie in My Sister Jodie (2008) is very memorable, particularly for those who, unlike myself, had read the book as a child. Hearing about this, and out of sheer morbidity curiosity (as well as through a desire to have read many of Wilson’s works) I decided to read it for the first time as an adult earlier this year, aged twenty. Even as an adult, it stuck with me and was somewhat disturbing, so I cannot imagine how disturbing a child would find it. J 

Jodie dresses up as a ghost, to scare those taunting her for telling the young boys at her and her sister Pearl’s school a Halloween story about a ‘sad white whispering woman’, standing in the window of a forbidden tower. In a bid to show the younger ones it’s just her, she opens the window and attempts to remove the shawl she is wearing over her distinctive purple hair, but she wobbles in her red high heels, having tugged the shawl too hard, and falls to her death in front of all the pupils at her school, while the Bonfire Night fireworks shoot up into the sky. The character of Jodie is only fourteen, and the protagonist, Pearl, is eleven. The following chapter deals with Pearl’s feelings, and how she copes. It is revealed that she and Jodie were going to have a baby sister called May, before Jodie dies, who is born six months after Jodie’s death. The book is addressed to her, so that she knows about Jodie when she is old enough to understand. 

Wilson covers many other topics besides, including parents separating or divorcing, single parents, teenage parents, mentions smoking and drinking, mentions swearing without using swear words, discusses petty crime such as theft, and briefly mentions things such as murder. For example, the Victorian Hetty Feather, from the Hetty Feather series (2009-2015) reads grisly tales of murder, although only occasional violence is mentioned. She was born out of wedlock in a time where this was completely unacceptable, and grew up a foundling as a result, and suffers from bereavement herself when she loses her beloved mother, Ida. She also discusses running away, mentions suicide (although only briefly, for the most part), mental health issues, trauma, growing up in care, parental abandonment, parental neglect and much more besides, including touching on disability and queerness.

She touches on the workhouse and World War I and World War II in her historical fiction, too, with the titular protagonist of Opal Plumstead losing her partner in World War I. Many of her protagonists do not live in a nuclear family, and many have stepparents, steppsiblings, half-siblings, and parents who are dead or not active participants in their children’s lives. There are quite a few single parents, especially Mums but also a few single Dads, and children born out of wedlock. A lot of the single parents are young and have children from other relationships, such as in Lily Alone, Little Darlings and The Diamond Girls. A lot of the time, these children do not live in a traditional, nuclear family unit. 

As an adopted person born out of wedlock with half-siblings through my birth parents, I understand what it is like to an extent to not have come from a traditional family, despite living in one now. These characters do, too, and I believe that this is relatable for Wilson’s readers, young and old alike. Wilson is realistic about what she depicts; she does not sugarcoat facts of lives and harsh realities. Yes, her characters almost always have hopeful endings to their stories, but she does not, generally speaking, give them the perfect fairytale ending. I think this is so important, to show you don’t always get what you want, or you find a new goal, or you get what you want in a different way to how you expect it, or if you do get it then things aren’t always perfect. This makes it true to life and sets up realistic expectations for adult life, in my opinion. Additionally, her coverage of taboo topics creates a conversation and makes it less controversial to talk about important topics that affect many people’s lives. 

I feel as though the problem with modern British children’s books, as brilliantly diverse as they tend to be these days, is that some of them have rather unrealistic endings, or sugarcoat or gloss over realities that children face in day-to-day life. Children’s books in the UK now often have silly topics, revolving around fart jokes and the like. Is this really what children need, at a time when the world is burning, a fascist is about to become the leader of the most powerful country in the world (for the second time), there’s conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, including a genocide in Gaza, and the West is tending more towards the right-wing at the moment? 

Now, I’m not suggesting that we expose children to gritty pieces of political dystopia. I’m merely saying that I feel as though children’s books should cover things that impact them, such as race, disability, sexism, climate change, poverty and more. There is a way we can make these topics palatable to children, and offer them hope. We can say to the next generation, ‘you can make a difference’, by using children’s books not only for entertainment, but to educate them about the world around them and encourage them to care about issues that do, and will continue to, impact them in their lives. 

Wilson’s works are a great example of this. Although they are often funny and hopeful, with engaging characters and dialogue, as well as interesting plotlines, the themes present in them are often quite serious and relevant to children’s lives. Some of these are, or have historically been, taboo. Talking about these topics is important in supporting those in similar situations, and making them feel truly seen. Reading should be prioritised and we should be incentivising children to read more. Any reading is good, is how many see it, given how little children enjoy reading in the UK (insert Guardian statistic here). 

Nevertheless, we need to focus not only on getting children reading, by examining what they are reading too. Wilson’s works, I believe, had a powerful influence on me as a child, and continue to influence me to this day, not only as a writer and reader, but as a tutor and aspiring teacher, and also as a person. I dare say her works have also had a similar impact on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others besides me. Her works stand the test of time, and continue to do so. We love you, Jacqueline!