:00:09. > :00:15.States. We go to HARDtalk now.
:00:15. > :00:21.Over the past ten years Jacqueline Wilson has been the most borrowed
:00:21. > :00:27.author from British libraries. She has sold 30 million of her books in
:00:27. > :00:31.the UK and written nearly 100 of them. They almost always focus on a
:00:31. > :00:37.young girl in a difficult family usually being brought up single-
:00:37. > :00:41.handedly by her mother, sometimes with an abusive stepfather and
:00:41. > :00:51.often with drink and drugs. Why does she draw on such bleak
:00:51. > :01:12.
:01:12. > :01:17.Jacqueline Wilson, welcome to HARDtalk. Why are you were
:01:17. > :01:21.attracted to situations, plot lines that are so difficult in a way?
:01:21. > :01:31.don't think all of my book mights reflect this bleak approach but
:01:31. > :01:35.
:01:35. > :01:44.some do. -- my books. I have always been attracted to outsiders and I
:01:44. > :01:49.like writing about sad little moppets. It gives me something to
:01:49. > :01:55.write about and hopefully it is my readers something to think, if my
:01:55. > :02:05.mum went off, if I were a Victorian orphan, this is the way it would
:02:05. > :02:10.
:02:10. > :02:17.feel. Typically they are set in a modern day. I wonder what it is -
:02:17. > :02:22.your character is an abandoned girl in a children's homes. What is it
:02:22. > :02:32.about her that attracts you are typically young reader? Basically
:02:32. > :02:42.with Tracy she is naughty. She has had a tough time and like other
:02:42. > :02:48.kids in care, she doesn't withdraw into herself, she is furious. If
:02:48. > :02:57.you hear her a ranting, I'm sure other mothers think there she is
:02:57. > :03:01.again! Children understand why she feels so strongly. I have met a lot
:03:01. > :03:07.of real life people like her and I think she has got a lot going for
:03:07. > :03:16.her but I think she needs to be understood. A lot of girls get in
:03:16. > :03:22.contact with you when they can relate? They do. I get
:03:22. > :03:28.correspondence and most are from perfectly ordinary children who say,
:03:28. > :03:34.I want to be famous liked you, please send me your latest book but
:03:34. > :03:40.there are touching stories as well. I am particularly thrilled when I
:03:40. > :03:47.get e-mails from kids in care. Tracey has kind of raised their
:03:47. > :03:53.status. At school children will say you have been in care like Tracey?
:03:53. > :04:02.It makes them feel more special. Often I get letters from children
:04:02. > :04:06.whose parents have split up, have got an ill. If they think I know
:04:06. > :04:13.how they are feeling it makes them feel they have a friend they can
:04:13. > :04:20.confide in. Do use their stories to perhaps inspire your next book?
:04:20. > :04:25.I do not like to do that. I think it would be very difficult
:04:25. > :04:31.territory if I did. Children confide in me. They don't often say
:04:31. > :04:37.don't tell anyone but that is implicit in what they are saying.
:04:37. > :04:47.They do, the language they use, it keeps me in touch with the way the
:04:47. > :04:57.
:04:57. > :05:04.average 9-10-year-old Finks. -- thinks. Often it is the first time
:05:04. > :05:12.they have come across situations such as parents drinking. Do you
:05:12. > :05:16.wonder about the effect you're having? Of course I wonder.
:05:16. > :05:21.Certainly there are some books that deal with the issues you have
:05:21. > :05:26.mentioned and I think children are very much aware that these things
:05:26. > :05:32.happen. Often children watch television soap operas and all
:05:32. > :05:38.sorts of lurid story lines happened and they absorb things. I don't
:05:38. > :05:44.think I am telling them anything new. What I do try to do is show
:05:44. > :05:48.what it is like to be a child in this situation. I try very hard to
:05:48. > :05:56.be careful and responsible and not actually write anything too
:05:56. > :06:01.upsetting, too troubling. There have been a couple of sinister
:06:01. > :06:08.parents, worrying people but I don't go into graphic detail. Apart
:06:08. > :06:18.from one book, I have always had happy and reassuring endings.
:06:18. > :06:28.of your stories do broach difficult territory. I could pick up any
:06:28. > :06:37.number of them. "We were better off without Dad and then mum met Mac
:06:37. > :06:44.and he does smack mum and me." You have a 14-year-old girl who kisses
:06:44. > :06:50.her married school teacher... was very dangerous territory. It
:06:50. > :06:55.came about because I was on a radio programme and I was asked if there
:06:55. > :07:00.are subject you feel you can't deal with? They had just been a case in
:07:00. > :07:06.the newspapers of a teacher getting involved with a student. I said
:07:06. > :07:13.that I think that would be totally forbidden territory, too difficult
:07:13. > :07:19.and controversial. My then editor at the time said, "We have just
:07:19. > :07:24.asked around the office and this is a common fantasy of teenage girls
:07:24. > :07:28.and why don't you go for it?" obviously you don't want a child
:07:28. > :07:34.reader to think that I am a proofing of having any kind of
:07:34. > :07:41.relationship, even a crash on a married teacher. What I did these
:07:41. > :07:51.have a specific girl who had been homes cold and was lonely and
:07:51. > :07:53.
:07:53. > :07:59.unhappy. -- home schooled. She and her art teacher got close, I
:07:59. > :08:04.wouldn't go further than that. I have had many letters from teenage
:08:04. > :08:12.girls and they often say why didn't they have a proper affair? There
:08:12. > :08:17.should be one book for the teenage girl about an affair with the
:08:17. > :08:21.teacher and a proper and sensible version for everybody else. I am
:08:21. > :08:27.truly responsible in that I don't want, ever, to write anything that
:08:27. > :08:32.would encourage some young girl to think that this is OK, Jacqueline
:08:32. > :08:37.Wilson says it is OK. The fact that you had not written about this
:08:37. > :08:44.before, presumably because you are aware of what you write
:08:44. > :08:54.influencing... I am aware of the influence in. I first realised this
:08:54. > :08:58.when I had written a book about identical twin girls. I saw a lot
:08:59. > :09:04.of children and was standing in a queue in a cafe and two girls in
:09:04. > :09:12.front of me, two very different looking girls talking as if they
:09:12. > :09:22.were twin sisters. I was quite interested. One of them said
:09:22. > :09:31.
:09:31. > :09:37."Rebbie, you are so bossy!" the other said "You are silly). They
:09:37. > :09:42.said it is a great book. I wrote to. They were very sweet about it. It
:09:42. > :09:47.made me realise that they had taken on board the characters, were
:09:47. > :09:55.acting them out, had actually put their hair into Platz, an old-
:09:55. > :10:00.fashioned hairstyle I am fond of and I thought this is a way I can
:10:00. > :10:09.benignly influence girls to play things out. It made me realise you
:10:09. > :10:14.have to be extremely careful. I would never, as far as I am aware,
:10:14. > :10:20.I wouldn't have a child sort of playing some game like crossing the
:10:20. > :10:27.road in front of traffic as a dare, something like that. Just in case
:10:27. > :10:32.any child ever picked up on that. In another book I think this was at
:10:32. > :10:39.a time when glue-sniffing was prevalent, I was going to have a
:10:39. > :10:46.minor character doing this, showing what a silly and dangerous thing it
:10:46. > :10:52.was. I thought about it and said no, if I am introducing that to one
:10:52. > :11:02.child, you can't do that. You will know, you have been criticised, let
:11:02. > :11:06.
:11:06. > :11:11.me quote you"I would go so far as to say, it accounts for a good deal
:11:11. > :11:16.of the tension in otherwise stable and middle class homes close work.
:11:16. > :11:21.She suggested that what children are picking up, they are perhaps
:11:21. > :11:28.going out and acting in their own perhaps stable homes. She is
:11:28. > :11:33.allowed to have her own opinion however I am the one who gets over
:11:33. > :11:39.1000 e-mails most weeks and lots of letters plus many, many school
:11:39. > :11:44.letters. I think mostly children understand entirely that these are
:11:44. > :11:49.specific stories that I am writing about and most of the children that
:11:49. > :11:54.right to me come from happy, secure backgrounds and are very pleased
:11:54. > :11:59.that they do come from this kind of background. They like reading about
:11:59. > :12:08.children going through an extreme time just as, I don't know, don't
:12:08. > :12:15.get me wrong, the fun of reading Dickens is reading about orphaned
:12:15. > :12:25.children, put upon children and see how they cope, how they manage.
:12:25. > :12:26.
:12:26. > :12:30.am going to. You now. You wrote in 2008, you read in the Guardian, in
:12:31. > :12:37.today's society children are growing up too quickly. They don't
:12:37. > :12:42.have the maturity to engage with ideas. Yes. What I am doing in my
:12:43. > :12:49.books is reflecting my different characters and how they feel and
:12:49. > :12:57.what they do. In real life, look at me - I am more of a generation
:12:57. > :13:02.where children were bought up strip be. Sometimes when I look at girls
:13:03. > :13:12.in year five, you six, they have a school day, can wear their own
:13:13. > :13:19.
:13:19. > :13:23.They would wear slightly inappropriate clothes. I would
:13:23. > :13:27.complement them and say they look wonderful if I was meeting them. I
:13:27. > :13:37.would say it is a shame they were not aware liberty smocks and
:13:37. > :13:39.
:13:39. > :13:46.clubbers angles -- sandals. Sometimes the mother is jester.
:13:46. > :13:53.Benny had the younger Chad who is much more from be. What does the
:13:53. > :13:57.child reading it want to be like? - she went to dress like the one...
:13:57. > :14:03.don't think the children want to be the characters in my books. I think
:14:03. > :14:07.they feel sorry for them or emotionally engaged with them. But
:14:07. > :14:17.my characters are not aspirational characters. I'd never tried to deal
:14:17. > :14:18.
:14:18. > :14:26.that. Again thing in children but Mark -- children's books should do
:14:26. > :14:30.that. What I am saying is, this is the way my imaginary characters
:14:30. > :14:35.behave and this is what happens to them. I tried a delay in a way
:14:35. > :14:41.which is entertaining. If he were to ask a class of children who have
:14:41. > :14:49.read my books to define them in one word, it would not be shocking and
:14:49. > :14:54.it would not be contemporary. I would think it would be funny. I do
:14:54. > :14:58.not set out to be funny books but they always have humour within them.
:14:58. > :15:04.Often, when children are asked to define books in their different
:15:04. > :15:13.genres, it is funny. Children involved in my books to laugh at
:15:13. > :15:18.the things that happen. It is a little adventure for them. Then
:15:18. > :15:28.they get to the end and they find everything is all right. Then
:15:28. > :15:31.
:15:31. > :15:34.children read and re-read. language is realistic. But in being
:15:34. > :15:39.realistic you are using language that might be the first time a
:15:39. > :15:43.young girl is exposed to it. never use a real swear words. There
:15:43. > :15:53.was controversy wants over one particular word which has now been
:15:53. > :15:53.
:15:53. > :16:00.changed. I never use conventional four letter words. I do not use
:16:00. > :16:07.that language myself. Forgive me for interrupting. It is not just
:16:07. > :16:17.the language. It is the whole aggression behind some of the
:16:17. > :16:26.
:16:26. > :16:36.things. Way the one character, she is a middle class little girl in a
:16:36. > :16:45.home where the father is a builder but a bully. He has a daughter that
:16:45. > :16:49.he wanted to call beauty. But she is a plane and solemn little girl.
:16:49. > :16:59.She is sent to a private girls' school. She is teased and she does
:16:59. > :17:09.not really fit in. Some of the time, the dad is fine. But other times he
:17:09. > :17:13.
:17:13. > :17:16.is paid for. He undermines Hannah and her mother. -- her. Then when
:17:16. > :17:25.he does a dreadful thing, the mother and the charred have the
:17:25. > :17:33.strength to get out of the situation. Then maybe things picked
:17:33. > :17:38.up in the answering back. What are our children learning from this?
:17:38. > :17:45.What you can learn from my books, if you want to learn things from
:17:45. > :17:52.children's stories, his compassion. Are they not also picking up the
:17:52. > :17:57.start of language? When I listen to children, I think my children often,
:17:57. > :18:04.are simply reflecting the way children talk to their parents. I
:18:04. > :18:09.feel sorry for parents. When people are kind enough to stand in long
:18:09. > :18:15.queues to sign the books, I think they are quite wonderful to give up
:18:15. > :18:21.several hours to do these. Then, in front of me, a child will want me
:18:21. > :18:31.to sign the book. Every child wants a photograph taken with the mobile
:18:31. > :18:34.
:18:34. > :18:41.phones. We are smiling together. Then the parents cannot work the
:18:41. > :18:46.mobile phone and the parents are really horrible. They are informing
:18:46. > :18:52.you, rather you informing them. would have never spoke to my father
:18:52. > :18:58.like that. You have written about your teenage years. The transcribed
:18:58. > :19:08.from your diary aged around 14. That was brave of me. There were
:19:08. > :19:14.
:19:14. > :19:20.not very well written. I was very intense. You have proven to
:19:20. > :19:29.yourself now. After 100 books. hope I have. It feels like I have.
:19:29. > :19:33.It is still very odd. I wanted to be a writer for so long. Then I got
:19:33. > :19:39.published but I had about 20 years were very few people had ever heard
:19:39. > :19:45.of me. Therefore when people are interested now and they have heard
:19:45. > :19:53.of me and when children recognise me, it is always a slight surprise
:19:53. > :19:58.and a delight. Still? Still, yes. For so long, I did not think that
:19:58. > :20:05.would happen. It is very strange indeed. It is a huge privilege.
:20:05. > :20:09.that why you still writes so much? Not at all. I write because I am
:20:09. > :20:15.obsessive. It is the way I had always thought. Since I was six, I
:20:15. > :20:20.would make up stories in my head. Friends and family tell me to calm
:20:20. > :20:25.down. They tell me to put my feet up and enjoy myself. I do not think
:20:25. > :20:31.I can. It is the first think I think about when I wake up in the
:20:31. > :20:37.morning. I always write for an hour. Sometimes I cannot sleep at night
:20:37. > :20:44.because I'm thinking about my story. It is a huge part of me. I like
:20:44. > :20:50.doing it. And so the brain switches off altogether, I am just going to
:20:50. > :20:55.carry on. You are the most borrowed author from British libraries in
:20:55. > :21:05.this century. Libraries are under pressure now due to cuts. You are
:21:05. > :21:07.
:21:07. > :21:14.involved in campaigns in trying to help them. Alan Bennett gave a
:21:14. > :21:18.wonderful talk. If he cannot win them over, who can? The reason is
:21:18. > :21:24.we probably do not need libraries anymore. I can see his point of
:21:24. > :21:32.view. Paperbacks are quite expensive. I know you can go on the
:21:32. > :21:37.internet and by a cheaper copies. But I think libraries ice and
:21:37. > :21:41.tradition are so important. It would be wonderful to have this
:21:41. > :21:50.cultural centre for each small town. They are not caught will centres
:21:50. > :21:54.anymore. It is people going on the internet in the library. I live
:21:54. > :21:58.quite close to my local library. The very library I went to when I
:21:58. > :22:08.was a charge. The very elegant part of the building is the children
:22:08. > :22:13.section. It has been taken over by computers. But still, I would still
:22:13. > :22:20.fight for libraries. They vary enormously. I have travelled the
:22:20. > :22:26.country giving talks and libraries. And librarians care passionately
:22:26. > :22:30.about books, especially about the children who would not normally be
:22:30. > :22:39.reading a book. There are still many families where there are no
:22:39. > :22:45.books in the House. Or if they visit on the school, it helps
:22:45. > :22:52.children realise books are not boring. Stories can be fine and
:22:52. > :22:55.there could be one book which reflects a child. There have been
:22:55. > :23:02.campaigns in getting children reading and I had been phenomenally
:23:02. > :23:05.successful. You have had a huge impact on children's reading. I
:23:05. > :23:12.wonder if libraries are really making that difference and it the
:23:12. > :23:22.money could be spent more effectively?. If he instil a love
:23:22. > :23:26.
:23:26. > :23:36.of reading and variety into children, there is your chance with
:23:36. > :23:39.don't you try this? Does it ever wind you up that people recognise
:23:39. > :23:45.you as hugely successful and a brilliant author, you are not
:23:45. > :23:49.really regarded as a literary one. I wish I was. But you cannot
:23:49. > :23:56.control this. All that matters to me is that I please children. I
:23:56. > :24:04.tried to write the best stories I can. Eight girls in my books are
:24:04. > :24:11.always bookworms. They are often told by some caring parent or