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I had the great
pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Wilson several years ago when we were invited to
a North London school for deaf children to talk about our writing. What a
lovely lady she is!
One of the
great difficulties is getting children to read – and personally I think Ms
Wilson should receive the highest honour possible for managing to get younger
readers engrossed in brilliant stories.
Clover moon
(what a delightful name!) is eleven years old. She lives in a Victorian London
slum with six siblings, her father and a wicked step-mother, Mildred. Mildred
regularly beats poor Clover and refuses to allow her to attend school, but
using her love of drawing Clover looks at the happier sides of life. But she
must keep this a secret from Mildred. Then one day Clover meets someone who can
help her do something more with her life.
Jacqueline
Wilson specialises in the difficulties of life, be the problems set in the Victorian
era or present day. Life is not a bed of roses, bad things happen to all of us,
but good things happen too, and Ms Wilson has a talent for writing ‘real’
stories about ’real’ life and making her characters feel just as real to her
readers.
Younger readers
– and older ones come to that – will enjoy meeting Clover because she is
clever, resourceful, determined and brave. She endures harsh times, brutality
and grief. She struggles to cope and to survive and we admire her for all that
and more. Her life, at least at first, is relentlessly grim but hers is a very
accurate description of life as it was then – I think I would go as far as
saying think of Clover Moon as Dickens for children.
© Helen Hollick
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