Jacqueline Wilson in Roehampton Library

Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first ‘novel’ when she was nine, filling in countless Woolworths exercise books with scribblings.

Today, with over 100 books to her name and over 40 million copies of them sold, Jacqueline has gone on to fire young imaginations like few others alive.

Her vivid creations - beloved characters such as Tracey Beaker and Hetty Feather - remain inspirations to children everywhere. She is a former Children’s Laureate and was appointed a Dame in 2008.

In this episode, Ben discusses with Jacqueline how she manages still to tap into that child’s-eye-worldview, as well as how the magical library of her own childhood led Jacqueline to pursue those dreams of writing…

For the episode, Jacqueline selected Roehampton Library as her chosen venue. The library is very dear to Jacqueline, not least as her close friend Stuart Wynn works there. Stuart joined Ben’s and Jacqueline’s conversation and his enthusiasm for the role of librarian is infectious. Indeed Stuart wanted to be a librarian from around the same tender age that Jacqueline decided she wanted to be a writer.

 

 

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Please find below a full transcript of Episode 2: Jacqueline Wilson  

Welcome to Ex Libris, the podcast that, with the help of the greatest writers around, champions libraries and bookshops. These are our society’s safe spaces, particularly libraries - they are palaces for the people, free of charge, where everyone is welcome and nobody judged, yet they are in peril.  My name is Ben Holden, writer and producer, and, more to the point, fed up with this state of affairs, so in each episode of Ex Libris, I will be meeting an author in a library or bookshop of their choice, somewhere that has become resonant for them, and I hope that after you have listened to this episode, it will feel special to you too.

 

Introduction

 

Ben Holden:

 

So, this week’s location has just afforded me a shelter from the storm.  It’s one of those grim, wet days here in West London, proper cats and dogs stuff out there.  But, I’ve stepped inside a concrete oasis.  I’m in Roehampton library; it’s a brutalist beacon, nestled just around the corner from a GP surgery, church and youth centre, within a very lively housing estate.  It was chosen by one of Britain’s best selling and most beloved authors, Jacqueline Wilson.  With over 100 books to her name, and over 40 million copies of them sold, Jacqueline has fired young imaginations like few others alive.  She is a former children’s laureate and appointed a Dame in 2008.  Jacqueline has chosen Roehampton library, partly because it’s where her good friend Stuart Wynn works.  I’m excited to sit down with them here in a back office.  Hopefully, we can walk off with a few leaves taken out of their books.

 

Interview

 

Ben Holden:

Jacqueline, why Roehampton library?  Can you describe the place for our listeners?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

It’s not the most esoteric and quiet, and leatherbound volumes-type library, at all; it’s a community library on the edge of one of the very biggest council estates in London, the Alton estate, which won goodness knows how many awards.  It’s a most interesting estate; it’s lively with everything that that entails.  I think this is a fantastic library; it wasn’t one I went to as a child because I lived a little bit further away in Kingston, but I saw the Alton estate growing up, and it changing the whole atmosphere from a sleepy, little, almost country village, to the vibrant, strangely noisy place that it is today. And, I just love the idea that, as well as the usual chicken shops and little supermarkets that are all along this parade, there is the library, and it’s a fantastic library; it was opened in 1961, and yet, it’s modernised itself, it’s so modern that I was only hearing today that they’ve recently had a drag artist talk for the children - how current is that! And, they do so many different activities here for adults, for children; it’s so colourful, it’s so warm, it’s so well decorated; to me, it’s everything a library should be; and in a community, where, possibly, there either isn’t the money or the inclination to have shelves of books all over people’s flats, it’s fantastic that they still could get introduced to whatever books they want. 

 

Ben Holden:

This feels like a real hub, Stuart, how did you come to work here?

 

Stuart Wynn:

I came to work here in 2009 after having worked as a casual Saturday assistant at Southfields library which is one of the next closest libraries to here.  It is a great space, I love working here.  I love working in libraries; it is the one thing I wanted to do from when I was in primary school and secondary school.  The first thing I wanted to do at secondary school was be an assistant in the school library, but it was flooded when I first got to school, so it was agonising just waiting for it to open; and I went in there, met a wonderful librarian called Wendy, who I still will talk to now, and we send each other postcards on Hardy’s Dorset and Brontë’s Yorkshire, and it’s wonderful.  It’s a super place to work and come into everyday; it’s not always about the books like I thought it would be, but helping people in the community, directions, newspapers, internet access, photocopying - it does so much more than the traditional “Shush!” attitude.

 

Ben Holden:

And, how did you guys strike up your friendship?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

In a rather unlikely place.  Stuart and I are very lucky; we’ve both had successful kidney transplants, and we met up in the post-transplant unit where you have to keep going back again and again, particularly in the first year or so, just to check you’re not rejecting your kidney.  And, they do wonderful jobs, - we wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them -, but they are dreary places, and you need to take a book with you, because you wait for hours.  And, I noticed there was this young man opposite me, and he had his head in a book, and I had my book, and I would glance at him occasionally, simply because I’m always interested when I see somebody reading.  Stuart was glancing at me, and when we sensed it was more or less my turn on the list to go through, he said, shyly, “I’d just like you to know that I really love your books and they’re very popular in the library where I work”, and I was amazed because I wasn’t looking my best, shall we say! 

But, we started chatting, and after we’d both been to see our various doctors and nurses etc, we joined up again and we started talking about children’s books; and I pride myself on knowing a lot about children's books, and I’d been living twice as long as Stuart, but he knows far more than me, and it was incredible.  And, in fact, my partner and my friend had their car, and we gave Stuart a lift, and the other two didn’t get a word in edgeways!  We were just bonding over our favourites and discussing things.  And then, sometimes we got lucky, and we were having treatment on the same day and we visited each other, and we’ve been pals ever since.

 

Ben Holden:

What were the books that you two bonded over?

 

Stuart Wynn:

Lots of female authors which have been forgotten about, mainly people like Jean Rhys, Stella Gibbons, Dorothy Whipple; the children’s authors like E. Nesbitt, and Noel Streatfeild.

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

I was particularly delighted, because Noel Streatfeild opened this very library, and Stuart has a wonderful photograph of a much younger Noel Streatfeild with a group of the most tidy, well-scrubbed children I’ve ever seen in my life, and there is a plaque as you come into the library saying that she opened it here.  And, as Noel Streatfeild has always been one of my all time favourite authors, I just loved that connection.

 

Ben Holden:

Where were the libraries that were special for you growing up?  I know you wanted to write from a very early age…

 

Jacqueline Wilson: 

I did, from (the age of) six.  I know it was from six, because I had my tonsils out and I was told that the Doctor who was trying to make conversation said, “What do you want to do when you grow up little girl?”, and I said, “I want to be an author!”, which was a strange reply in those days; but, I loved books before I could read, just looking at the pictures and making up my own stories.

I came from a council estate too; we didn’t have much money; I only had three or four books throughout my little girlhood, so my mum actually joined me to Kingston library when I was six, and in those long ago days, young children and picture books weren’t so much included in libraries, but she did get permission for me to go.  And Kingston library which is still going strong now, though, very sadly, the beautiful room in which the children's library was is now one of the computer rooms, and the actual children’s library is in a glorified portacabin, which rather shows nowadays that we put the very best and most precious things in the precious room, and things that perhaps aren't as high priority in some people’s minds in the glorified portacabin, but that’s just me being mischievous!

But, I loved Kingston library; I went there every week in the school holidays, and as soon as I was able to travel by myself, I went practically everyday to the library.  I just liked it as a place to hang out, but I borrowed armfuls of books throughout my childhood.  By the time I was 11, I was given special permission to actually use the adult library too, but under supervision - I had to show my books, so no ‘Lolita’ or ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’ for me! 

But I just loved both places, and I joined the school library too.  And, until I was actually able to earn my own money and start to buy books, I mean, libraries just nurtured me and kept me going.  The thing I particularly liked (about the library) was that, in my own home, there were very popular books, like the James Bond books, or big blockbuster-y type books that my parents did read, but apart from an untouched set of Dickens, there were no classics, there were no modern literature novels - that wasn’t anything that interested my parents.  Now, obviously, I read for sheer fun and pleasure a lot of the time, but having access to the library, it did make me take out some of the classics that I maybe just heard mentioned.  I mean, some I put back the next day thinking, “No, not for me”, but some I persevered with.  And, in a way, truthfully, my library gave me more of an education than attending secondary school did.  And, I just think the idea that, nowadays, so many of the libraries have closed or are under threat, or looked on as very low priority in a council’s spending, I think is very sad.

 

Ben Holden:

I’m always amazed that whilst you’re very prolific, each book has the same fresh child’s eye view and wonder and rhythm.  How do you maintain that after such an illustrious career and so many books; how do you keep that child’s eye view?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

I think it’s something that you just have.  I’m recently reading a proof copy of another biography of E. Nesbitt, and there’s quite a long quote from her that says from the way that you write about children, you not only have to put yourself in their shoes, but you have to remember exactly how it feels, and how you can get so upset, and how you can get so over the moon with excitement over something really quite trivial. 

And I know times change and children’s interests change, but their emotions don’t change.  And, I think, I can remember so vividly everything that happened to me before I was about 14, whereas ask me what I was doing two years ago, I would struggle.  And so it’s just something that comes easily to me; in that, I would have thought it would have been a very shrewd move, because a lot of children have grown up reading my books, because I’ve been around such a long time, and I know that if I wrote adult books there might well be an audience, but I just couldn’t write about twenty or thirty somethings, I just couldn’t get into that head.  I couldn’t write about women my age.  I specialise in children, and I’m not going to change now.

 

Ben Holden:

And you also leap around from different periods, and obviously, Tracy Beaker is now a mum herself?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

Yes, I thought that was too good a chance to miss, but you see, I don’t do it from Tracy’s point of view, it’s from her daughter, Jess’s point of view.

 

Ben Holden:

And your new novel, ‘Dancing the Charleston’, is a period novel, but again, presumably the same rule applies whatever the period, in terms of the preoccupations and rhythms that you’re tapping into, it doesn’t matter, or does it?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

I think children do feel the same way about things, however, the further back in time you go, the more you can get away with, in that, if I were to write about a modern child now being incredibly cruelly treated, being kept in a cupboard, and even beaten by a stepfather say, this would be very controversial and very difficult, and very hard to get across in a way that wasn’t too frightening or too unpleasant.  But, stick it back in Victorian times, and somehow, - because even children who haven’t read Dickens might have seen a Dickens adaptation-, we’re used to that; it somehow doesn’t seem as shocking or as immediate, and children can feel great sympathy for these characters, but I don’t think it traumatises them the way it would with modern children. 

And for ‘Dancing the Charleston’ which was a joy to do, because I’ve always liked the 20s; I found that, in particular, that first real exciting age, when suddenly all the stuffiness of Victorians moved on through the Edwardian age, then, suddenly, we’re in this mad jazz age.  And I also wanted to show that, as well as a few bright things leaping around doing all sorts of controversial modern things, there were also your ordinary folk, 95% of people just pootling along, doing the same old things. So, I wanted to show the difference between those two worlds, and yet, I don’t really go into any of the major events in the 1920s, because I don’t think a child of 10 would really notice them. They would only notice their own home, their neighbours homes, so it’s easier in a way, you don’t have to tackle great political issues or the social injustices. You can just show that one family is poor and that another is rich, but you don’t have to do anything too much about it, you’re just experiencing it all through the eyes of the child. 

And I think also children have a freshness about their viewpoint.  Because, the first thing is you lose a best friend, and it’s as if nobody anywhere has experienced the torment, or the first time a 13 year old falls passionately in love - this is a whole new thing for you, and it just seems impossible to think that anybody could have gone through that, and I think that’s what makes it so exciting to write for young people.

 

Ben Holden:

You must still find joy in those little faces at reading events.  It must be magical for you?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

It is magical and it’s one of things I like most.  But, I do think you have to be literally in two minds if you are a writer, particularly a children’s writer, because, a lot of the time, you are at home, and it’s just you and your notebook or you and your computer, and you’re in your own little bubble.  But then, also, most children’s writers are required to get out there and do events in lovely libraries like this, in bookshops, at literary festivals, and then you’ve got to try and have a bit of razzmatazz and a few, not literal, magic tricks up your sleeve, but something that keeps them awake, and it’s quite hard work, but when it comes off, it’s fantastic.

 

Ben Holden:

When you’re writing, are you inhabiting a similar space to the young girl who was in the library in terms of your consciousness?  Is there a link to that imagination that was sparked in the library?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

I think there is.  One time I was lucky to have an exhibition put on about my work in the Seven Stories in Newcastle, which is the National Centre for Children’s Literature, and they consulted with me about the way I wanted it done. And I suddenly thought about the way I was in my bedroom as a child daydreaming with my small shelf of books, a few library books and my notebook and pen.  And that was my life then.  And I wanted that to be at the beginning of the exhibition, so that similar types of children could go in and see that it was a small, very modest bedroom, but that this was special to me.

And after you went through the exhibition and various books featured, and there were novelty things about the TV series of Tracy Beaker; then, at the end, they had photos that went right across one wall of part of my bedroom now with all the bookshelves.  And I have a rather swish chaise longue, but, basically, it’s exactly the same - it’s somewhere to rest, to daydream; I have a notebook and pen and old typewriter that I gave to the exhibition to show that I’m exactly the same person, with a lot more grey hair and wrinkles, but that it’s still the same process.

 

~

 

Extract from ‘The Illustrated Mum’ by Jacqueline Wilson, followed by discussion

 

Jacqueline Wilson: 

This is a little extract from the book called ‘The Illustrated Mum’, and it’s about an unfortunate little girl called Dolphin who has a very insecure life with a very extraordinary mum, but Dolphin worships her mum.  And, Dolphin isn’t that great at school at all, and like many similar children, she’s picked on by some of the others, and she decides, even though she’s not a good reader and finds reading a big struggle, a place of refuge might be the school library.  And she meets up with the librarian, Mr Harrison, who was:  “youngish and fat and funny.  He had very short, springy hair like fur, and brown beady eyes, and he often wore a jumper.  He was like a giant teddy bear, but without the growl”.  He’s very kind to Dolphin and he tells her to make herself at home.

“I wandered around the shelves picking up this book and that book, turning over the pages for the pictures.  I could read, sort of, but I hated all those thick wadges of print.  The words all wriggled on the page and wouldn’t make any kind of sense.  I looked to see if Mr Harrison was watching me, but he was deep in his paper.  I knelt down and poked my way through the picture books for little kids.  There was a strange, slightly scary one with lots of wild monsters.  Marigold would have loved to have turned them into a big tattoo.  I liked a bright, happy book too about a mum and a dad. The colours glowed inside the neat lines of the drawing. I traced around them with my finger.  I tried to imagine what it would feel like living in a picture book world where monsters are quelled by a look, and you feel safe in your own bed, and you have a spotty mum and a stripy dad with big smiles on their pink faces and they make you laugh.  “What are you reading?”.  “Nothing” I said shoving both books back on the shelf quickly”.

There’s a little boy called Owly Morris, you know, one of those horrible nicknames, because he wears very thick glasses and he’s another sad little soul.  But, this is my way of making Dolphin and Owly make friends, bonding over the books. And Dolphin promises not to call him Owly anymore because he doesn’t like it, and he says, ‘Don’t call me that.  It’s not my name”. 

I thought about it. “Ok, Oliver.” 

“Thank you, Dolphin”. 

“They’re calling me bottlenose now. I don’t know why.  What’s wrong with my nose?” I said, rubbing it.  “It’s not too big and it doesn’t have a funny bump”. 

“Bottlenose dolphin.  It’s a particular type of dolphin, right? The sort you see performing.”  Owly made high pitched dolphin squeaks.

So they whistle and squeak and Mr Harrison has a kindly word with them, and like any true librarian, he says: 

“Here, seeing as you’re both interested in dolphins, try reading about them”.

He found us a big book from the non-fiction section, and put it in front of us.  Big pictures of different dolphins alternated with chunks of text.  I looked carefully at the pictures, Oliver read the words. 

It was quite companioble.  So they make friends and I think that’s another wonderful thing about libraries, whether you’re a sad little kid who hasn’t got any friends; whether you’re an elderly person who’s a bit lonely and doesn’t have anybody to talk to at home; whether you’re a young mum with a toddler and you’re worn out and you’ve lost touch with all your work colleagues; whether you’re a middle aged woman whose marriage has broken up, libraries are better than shops, because you don’t need money to go in them, and you’ve got companionship all around you, and the smiley faces of librarians, hopefully, and they’re fantastic places.

 

Ben Holden:

Stuart, it must be a challenging, but also very fun and rewarding job working in a library?

 

Stuart Wynn:

Oh yes, whether you’re finding a book someone’s requesting, or recommending a book, or you help someone who’s not very IT savvy, it feels so good.  You know, we do very little these days to help one another, and to come to work each day for my job, and to feel that achievement, to help people, and they appreciate it, they’re so thankful, you get hugs sometimes, and if you’re very lucky, you might chocolate at Christmas, but it is wonderful. 

 

Ben Holden:

What people don’t always understand about library closures is that they are so much more than just repositories for books.  They’re so much more than that.  And yet, during 2018, 130 public libraries closed in the country, which was a net loss of 127. And spending on libraries fell by £30m, and by £66m in the year before. 

 

Stuart Wynn:

We (the local authority) haven’t closed any (libraries) for a long, long time.  We’re doing quite well.  In 2017/18, Wandsworth achieved some of the highest number of issues in London, so Wandsworth are very lucky, and we’re bucking the trend and doing quite well here.  I can’t imagine not having a library to go to.

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

I think this is where libraries are really needed, and I think, in urban areas, they still perform such a wonderful, wonderful job, and luckily, around here, they still are.  I have moved to the countryside, and what is so dreadful, is that all the tiny, little branch libraries in the little villages seem to be closing so rapidly.  In fact, I am in a fortnight going to open a very small village community library run by volunteers, because there are so many people without the transport or mobility to get themselves many miles to the nearest big library.  Again, if you’re bed-bound, how wonderful it must be to have a kindly library van come around once a week. 

(Volunteers do an incredible job, but...) You still need people with some kind of expertise to give advice, at the very least to help select appropriate books for the customers.  It just seems so sad.  I have noticed, I have not yet met another writer, and I know quite a lot, who didn’t live in their libraries as children.  Because even in the most affluent home, you can’t keep up with the child who, in the summer holidays, could read a book a day.  Libraries are desperately important. 

You can meet people quite naturally in libraries.  Whereas if you go particularly to meet other people, you go a bit self-conscious or a bit shy, but if you’ve got a purpose for going there, it works a treat.

 

Ben Holden: 

Jacqueline, you mentioned that you have a number of books, and I’ve read in your biography that you have over 20,000 books.  Can that be right?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

When I moved two-three years ago, though I was moving to a bigger house, I did think I had to downsize a bit.  It was very painful indeed, and I kept sneaking in more and more.  I’ve still got about 12,000 I would say, maybe more, and I have got books in every room. 

I have a big sitting room.  You see, this is girl from council estate, so it’s only quite recently that I’ve had a really biggish house, and, for me, it’s not the joy of showing off my house, it’s the joy of having enough space for my books.  And in the living room, all the way down one wall, from floor to ceiling, there’s wonderful, wonderful books and that’s where all my modern, hardback novels are.  And then in the conservatory, I’ve got heaps and heaps and heaps of paperbacks, because I thought if people are relaxing in the sunshine, if they’re coming to stay, I don’t mind people borrowing a paperback - they can just pick one off the shelf; I’m much more protective of my hardbacks.  And in the dining room, which is actually so grand we don’t dine there, I have a big bookshelf of my ultra-special and antiquarian books that I look at lovingly and very carefully, and gloat! 

Upstairs, well the bedroom has heaps of books. In the spare bedrooms, in one where there will probably be females sleeping, there are extra books about women novelists and all sorts of things they might like.  In the other room, there are some slightly more masculine authors, and also lots of serendipity books.  So, basically, wherever you go, you're surrounded by books.  And I have a big attic, and there are many, many bookshelves hidden up there. 

And, of course, if you're a children's author and write lots of books, and are lucky enough to be printed in about 40 different languages, you get all of them sent to you as well.  Often, I keep them in case we meet up with a child from that country, but they take up shelf space too. 

 

Ben Holden:

So you’ve kind of curated your dream library?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

I have, and this is the way I always wanted it to be.  20 years ago, I lived in an extremely small terraced house, but it’s amazing that nobody got killed going in there, because there were piles of books along the narrow hallway everywhere.  You couldn’t move for books. When I eventually did move somewhere else, it took my very painstaking partner about three months of every single day moving box after box of books.

 

Stuart Wynn:

My idea of decoration is bookshelves. There was a great book of essays by Anne Fadiman called ‘Ex Libris’ as well;  it’s about books and book lovers and couples merging their book collections, and there are wonderful bits in there about book collecting and book reading, like do you snap the spine, do you place books face down, do you use a bookmarks - the do’s and don'ts of book readers and book lovers.

 

Ben Holden: 

Jacqueline, are you quite reverential with the books themselves?  Are you someone who breaks the spine or turns the corners?

 

Jacqueline Wilson:

No, I don’t break the spine.  That is the worst sound ever!  And it’s very difficult, because some books are so badly bound nowadays, and some are so enormous, that you literally grapple with them to try and keep them open.  I think the best published books available now are Persephone Books, because they are beautifully published; they’re quite fat paperbacks with beautiful, pale grey colours, and you open them up and then they stay open - you don’t have to hold them down flat.  But, I am kind to books, I don’t turn down corners.  I have tried once or twice, quite self consciously, when it is a book I own for research, to take a pencil to try and mark it, but after three pages, I think, “I can’t, I can’t!”, and don’t do it anymore.

 

Jacqueline Wilson is invited to select a book from the shelves of Roehampton library

 

Ben Holden:

Jacqueline, maybe you could browse the shelves of Roehampton library, because part of the joy of libraries is the serendipity of discovering something you weren't expecting to walk out the door with, borrowing something new or an old friend?

 

~

 

Jacqueline Wilson:  Now, let’s see...Do we have any Noel Streatfeilds here?

 

Stuart Wynn:  We should do.

 

Jacqueline Wilson:  Yes! I’ve found ‘Ballet Shoes’!  Oh, and my goodness me, I truly didn’t know this...This is a 75th anniversary edition, and there’s a quote on the front:  “One of my all-time favourite books” by Jacqueline Wilson.  I had absolutely no idea, but it is my favourite book, and in this, my favourite library opened by Noel Streatfeild, what better book, so I shall borrow it and promise to bring it back!

 

 

[END]

 

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Ex Libris is produced by Chris Sharp and Ben Holden.

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