Jacqueline Wilson

Jacqueline Wilson was born Jacqueline Aitken, in Bath, Somerset, England, on December 17, 1945, to a civil servant father and an antiques dealer mother. She moved to Kingston upon Thames after a while and spent the early years of her childhood there.

She attended ‘Latchmere Primary School,’ where she first got addicted to books. She loved reading out stories in her classes. However, she received bad grades in creative writing, as the stories she wrote were not too formal or conventional.

She had an impeccable imagination since childhood. She filled her school notebooks with imaginary characters. One of her favorite authors was Noel Streatfeild, and she read books such as ‘What Katy Did’ and ‘Little Women.’

By the time she was 9 years old, she had written her first novel, which was a small 21-page piece titled ‘Meet the Maggots.’ It narrated the tale of a family with seven children. She exhibited a vivid and wild imagination at a tender age.

However, she was unable to concentrate in studies and was often found looking out of the windows in class. This continued till her high-school years. Her teacher would often tease her by calling her “Jacky Daydream.” Jacqueline had no interest in any other subject except English, and she had already made up her mind about becoming a writer.

Jacqueline applied for the job at ‘DC Thomson’ at the age of 17. Her selection was based on one of her write-ups that described the horrors of teen discos, which had become a trend among English teenagers.

While working there, she met a man named Millar Wilson. They dated for two years, before getting married in 1965. Jacqueline was 19 years old then and had just started working on her own literature projects. They had a daughter, Emma Wilson, two years later.

She faced a few rejections before she finally became a “published” author. Her first short story was published when she was 17 years old, while her first novel was published when she was 22 years old.

Some of her first books earned mixed reviews. She released more books, such as ‘Ricky’s Birthday,’ ‘Hide and Seek,’ ‘Truth and Dare,’ and ‘Let’s Pretend,’ while she struggled to become a well-known author. However, most of her books earned little or no success.

She increased her pace in the 1980s and wrote more than two books per year on an average. Toward the late 1980s, she finally started getting recognition. However, it was not before 1991 that she came to be known as a highly competent author.

In 1991, the first novel in the ‘Tracy Beaker’ franchise, ‘The Story of Tracy Beaker,’ was released. It was a first-person narrative by the leading character, a troubled 10-year-old girl named ‘Tracy Beaker.’

The book narrated the woes of ‘Tracy,’ a young girl with behavioral problems, living in a care home after being abandoned by her mother. Tracy was portrayed as a creative child, telling stories to the staff and her friends at the care home, once even mentioning her mother, a Hollywood star, who would come to get her someday.

From an adult’s point of view, ‘Tracy’ would come across as a character with deep psychological issues. The novel was equally loved by both children and adults. It was also critically and commercially successful. Her transition from a crime-thriller writer, with stories full of sex and violence, to a writer of a heartfelt children’s story was welcomed by all.