Creator / Jacqueline Wilson

“I try to have reasonably happy endings because I would hate any child to be cast down in gloom and despair; I want to show them you can find a way out of it.”

Jacqueline Wilson DBE, FRSL (née Aitken, born 17 December 1945) is a bestselling British author who has written a huge amount of novels for children and teenagers. Most of them are about a specific theme or problem that young people might face. The 1970s magazine Jackie may or may not have been named after her, depending on who you ask. As well as winning a truckload of awards, she was the Children's Laureate between 2005 and 2007, and was named in the 2008 Honours List.

On April 4, 2020 she came out as gay

Books with pages on this wiki include:

• Baby Love
• Bad Girls
• The Bed and Breakfast Star
• Best Friends
• Clean Break
• Cookie
• Deep Blue
• The Diamond Girls
• The Dream Palace
• Dustbin Baby
• Falling Apart
• The Girls Series:
  • Girls In Love
  • Girls Under Pressure
  • Girls Out Late
  • Girls In Tears
• The Hetty Feather series:
  • Hetty Feather
  • Sapphire Battersea
  • Emerald Star
  • Diamond
  • Little Stars
  • Hetty Feather's Christmas
• The Illustrated Mum
• Katy
• Kiss (2007)
• Little Darlings
• Lola Rose
• Love Lessons
• Midnight
• Secrets
• The Suitcase Kid
• Tracy Beaker Series:
  • The Story of Tracy Beaker
  • The Dare Game
  • Starring Tracy Beaker
  • Tracy Beaker's Thumping Heart
  • My Mum Tracy Beaker
  • We Are The Beaker Girls
• Vicky Angel

Other books include:

• Amber
• Buried Alive
• The Butterfly Club
• The Cat Mummy
• Cliffhanger
• Dancing The Charleston
• Double Act
• The Girl Who Wasn't There
• Glubbslyme
• How to Survive Summer Camp
• Lily Alone
• The Longest Whale Song
• The Lottie Project
• Love Frankie
• The Mum Minder
• My Sister Jodie
• Opal Plumstead
• The Other Edie Trimmer
• The Primrose Railway Children
• Rose Rivers
• The Runaway Girls
• Sleepovers
• Wave Me Goodbye
• The Worry Website
• Memoirs: Jacky Daydream, My Secret Diary

Several of her books have been adapted for TV:

• Tracy Beaker has been adapted on CBBC as The Story of Tracy Beaker and its sequels Tracy Beaker Returns and The Dumping Ground
• Also shown on CBBC is Hetty Feather from the Hetty Feather books.

---

Tropes found in her works:

• Abusive Parents: The titular heroine of Cookie has a father who borders on this, and is certainly abusive to his wife. There's also Elsa's stepfather (nicknamed "Mack the Smack" because he hits her) in The Bed and Breakfast Star ^note It’s unclear though, given that The Bed and Breakfast Star was published in the 1990’s, if it’s more of a case of Values Dissonance, as at the time, smacking your children was seen as an acceptable way to punish your children, Mary's mother in The Diamond Girls and Treasure's stepfather in Secrets.
  • The Worry Website also has Lisa's dad, her main worry being that she finds out that he's been hitting her mum. She ends up not posting it on the website, instead saying that she's worried about starting to get spots instead.
  • Marigold mentions that her mother was abusive, and she spent most of her childhood in care homes. She expresses a fear that she is also one later on.
  • Lola Rose's father, who, like Cookie's, was initially abusive to her mom and later to her as well. It is implied that this is the reason that Lola Rose's mother gets cancer.
  • It's implied that Tracy Beaker was abused by her mother's boyfriends before being taken into care. Tracy also mentions that before going to the "Dumping Ground", she lived with "Aunt" Peggy: a foster carer who frequently hit her and yelled at her.
  • Charlie's character Lottie in "The Lottie Project" had an alcoholic abusive father who kept the family in poverty and had recently died.
  • Selma's mother and stepfather in The Butterfly Club.
  • Mildred in Clover Moon is regularly physically abusive towards Clover, and locks her in the closet under the stairs in the dark for as long as she can when she's in quarantine for scarlet fever, prolonging it until Clover's father insists on letting her out. She also doesn't even notice when Megs is the one who's got the fever and tries to dismiss it by saying that she is just "grizzly" - had she not let Clover out when she did, Megs would have literally died of neglect.
  • Katy's father in Waiting For the Sky to Fall, and Prue's father in Love Lessons, are extremely controlling, demanding and emotionally abusive towards their children.
  • Em's biological father was a "violent nutter" (although a meeting with him shows that he's most likely changed, having a new wife and kids he's fine with), and while Vita's father Frankie in Clean Break may not be physically abusive, but he is a "sleazy charmer" with major commitment issues and is completely oblivious to the pain he is causing to his wife and kids.
• Adaptation Distillation: The first book of Hetty Feather spends half the story about Hetty's life in her foster home and later, her return to the Foundling Hospital at age five before the Time Skip. The show however, gives a small introduction in the first episode before focusing entirely on her current life in the hospital. This changes at the end of Series 3 when she, Gideon, and Sheila leave the hospital for their services.
  • The shift to Calender Hall also introduces a new cast of characters and stories that are original to the show.
• Adaptation Expansion: The first season of the TV series The Story Of Tracy Beaker was more-or-less the first book. But while the second book is about Tracy staying with Cam, the second TV season sees her back at the Dumping Ground after setting Cam's kitchen on fire. The show then ran for a further three seasons (including one where she gets fostered by Cam again), and ended two years before the third book came out. It has now started again with a series chronicling Tracy returning to the Dumping Ground as a carer, and continued with The Dumping Ground from 2013, showing the lives of the children and care workers after Tracy leaves.
  • The Hetty Feather TV series also expands on the lives of the boys in the show and gives focus on other characters, as opposed to everything focused on Hetty like in the book.
• Age-Gap Romance:
  • In the Girls series, this is a source of tension between Ellie's father (in his 50s) and stepmother (late 20s/early 30s.)
  • Implied to have been the case with Katy's parents in Katy; Katy's father has gray hair and is a senior doctor (suggesting he is middle-aged) whereas her mother is described as having been very young. His second wife Izzie is also mentioned as being much younger than him.
  • Sixteen-year-old Cassie in Opal Plumstead falls in love with Daniel Evandale, who is more than twice her age. This reaches a climax when Cassie runs away to live with him, since her mother disapproves.
  • In This Girl, Coral has an illicit relationship with Toby, who's around his mid to late 30s while she is in her mid-teens.
  • The title character of Amber briefly gets involved with Dave, who's at least twenty years older than she, when she believes she's pregnant and he offers to marry her and raise the baby with her. The relationship ends pretty much instantly when she finds out there is no baby.
  • In Cookie, Beauty's father is middle-aged and has had two previous wives; her mother is young enough that people mistake her for Beauty's older sister, and she says she wasn't much older than a child when she got married.
• The Alcoholic: Averted in Love Frankie when Frankie's mother falls over in front of all the high school students and they assume she's been drinking. She actually suffers from MS, which affects her muscles, but she asks Frankie not to tell anyone, so everyone continues to think it was caused by drunkenness.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: This trope tends to get Deconstructed a lot in her books, especially:
  • In The Illustrated Mum, Marigold obsesses over Mickey, who was at best a summer fling and doesn't show any interest in Marigold when they are reunited, only sticking around long enough to take her oldest child away from her and then disappear, leaving Marigold devastated and Dolphin forced to deal with the fallout. By contrast, Michael is a reasonable, nice guy who takes the news of having a surprise daughter considerably more maturely, goes through proper procedure instead of just whisking Dolphin away and he seems to still care for Marigold, but she isn't remotely interested in him.
  • In Lola Rose, Nikki fell for Jay and got pregnant with Jayni when she was only seventeen, but Jay began to abuse Nikki shortly after Jayni was born and he eventually turns on Jayni too, forcing Nikki to run away with Jayni and Kenny to protect them from him.
  • Sue in The Diamond Girls has four daughters all fathered by different men and all of them let her down, one was "too young to be a Dad", one abused her, one died of a drug overdose and one of them cheated on his wife with her. She still doesn't learn her lesson because she's pregnant with her fifth child at the start of the book and during an argument, Martine even tells her everyone on their old estate called her a slag behind her back.
  • Nadine repeatedly goes for bad boys in the Girls series and every time, Ellie and Magda have to come and bail her out, the shining example of this is when Nadine chats to a stranger online in Girls In Tears and he writes Erotica about her, only for it to turn out he's not seventeen but a man in his fifties when she meets him in person.
  • Destiny's mother Kate in Little Darlings had (or so she claims) a short but happy relationship with rock star Danny Kilman. In reality, it seems to have been merely a one-night stand. In the present day, he's married to Suzy but in a mutually abusive relationship with her, and is hostile when his daughter Sunset tries to tell him that Destiny is his daughter. It's also mentioned that another of Kate's boyfriends was violent and she and Destiny had to run away from him.
  • In The Dream Palace Lolly has an affair with Greg: an adult who's illegally "squatting" in an abandoned building and walks out on his previous girlfriend for her. He then stabs and seriously wounds her stepfather, forcing Lolly to go on the run with Greg, who suggests she become a prostitute to bring in money. The situation becomes so unbearable for Lolly that even though she still believes she loves Greg, she ends up handing him over to the police just to be able to return to a normal life.
  • Jodie in My Sister Jodie develops a crush on the gardener at Melchester (who is at least eighteen). Later after he deliberately runs over a badger with a tractor, she admits to Pearl that she knew he was a horrible person deep down but ignored it, liking the attention.
• Alliterative Name: Stella Stebbings, Dixie Diamond, Mab Macclesfield, Rebecca "Becks" Robinson, Rose Rivers. Clover Moon has Margaret "Megs" Moon, Mary Moon, and Mildred Moon all in the same family.
• Alpha Bitch: Justine in The Story of Tracy Beaker and My Mum Tracy Beaker, Kim in Bad Girls, Louise (she gets better) and Karen (she doesn't) in How to Survive Summer Camp, Chloe in Sleepovers, Rhiannon in Candyfloss, Skye in Cookie, Marilyn in Queenie, Sheila in Hetty Feather (who gets better by Sapphire Battersea), Rita in Love Lessons and Eva in Katy are all examples. Sally from Love Frankie swings between this when she's around most people and Lovable Alpha Bitch when it's just her and Frankie.
• Always Identical Twins: Ruby and Garnet. Averted in The Butterfly Club where triplets Tina, Maddie and Phil are not identical because Tina is considerably smaller than the other two.
• Ambiguously Gay: Mr Benjamin from Dancing The Charleston states that he has no interest in getting married and has a "pal" called Ambrose who stays with him. It's not stated what their relationship is, however, but that may be because the story is set in 1925, when such a relationship was illegal.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different - Diamond, the fourth in the Hetty Feather series, switches to the perspective of new protagonist Ellen Jane.
  • My Mum Tracy Beaker is told from the perspective of Jess, Tracy Beaker's daughter, but the story is still about Tracy Beaker all the same.
• Animal Motifs: A few examples:
  • In The Suitcase Kid, Andy's stepfather Bill is likened to a baboon, with his hairy body and squashed, monkey-like face; Andy even thinks he has a large, red posterior like a baboon.
  • In "The Bed and Breakfast Star", Elsa is associated with lions; she has curly hair like a lion's mane, was named for the famous lioness Elsa, is said to roar like a lion, and at the end of the book wears a jacket with a lion image on it. Her stepfather Mac is associated with warthogs, as she calls him a "hairy warthog" and says he snores like one.
  • Em in "Clean Break" is associated with hippos; she has a large, chunky frame and school bullies often refer to her as "The Hippo".
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Many characters qualify with this, such as Vita and Maxie to Em in "Clean Break" and Kenny to Jayni in "Lola Rose". Sometimes the protagonists only see them as this because they are often made to look after them on their own.
  • Rose in Rose Rivers feels that all of her siblings are this to a point, however, she often singles out Algie as the most annoying.
  • In The Werepuppy, Marigold is this to her brother Micky constantly, bullying him and bringing all her friends in to do the same.
  • Mostly averted with Pearl to Jodie in "My Sister Jodie".
  • Averted with Rowena in Love Frankie, who is extremely easygoing, despite being only six.
  • Defied in The Illustrated Mum; Dolphin mostly tries to avoid being annoying, and while Star is certainly irritated, her anger throughout the book is directed more at Marigold than at Dolphin.
  • Floss in Candyfloss sees her half-brother Tiger mainly as this, though she acknowledges that it's not his fault as he is just a baby and softens up to him when she realises she'll miss him in Australia.
• Astral Projection - Important to the plot of The Other Side, although it's left open to the reader as to whether it's real or just in the heroine's imagination.
• Attempted Rape - Magda in Girls Under Pressure. Particularly notable since Nadine was almost date-raped in Girls In Love.
• Author Appeal: Wilson is a big fan of The Wizard of Oz and includes many references to it in her books. Characters frequently bring it up as their favourite movie. A lot of the books also involve the protagonist having red as their favourite colour like Wilson.
• Author Avatar: Most of the protagonists in Jacqueline's children's books are this to an extent; they have a tendency to be shy and/or like writing, reading and making up stories or doing some kind of art (for example Violet's sewing, Ellie's cartoons and Lola Rose's collage), much like Jacqueline herself throughout her childhood.
  • Wilson has noted that many of her protagonists share similar backgrounds and experiences to hers: for instance, Dolphin's family's council house in The Illustrated Mum is similar to the one Wilson grew up in (in Jacky Daydream, she compares their downstairs neighbour to one her family had around the time she started school), and The Other Side was partly based on her own childhood experiences of believing that she could learn to fly.
  • Baby Love makes many comparisons between Laura's mother and Wilson's mother, including the whole class systems, her paying for Laura's glasses to have "fancy upswept frames" and even working similar hours. This may be subconscious, as Laura is a teenager around the same time as Wilson (they were both fourteen in 1960, when the story takes place).
• Barred from the Afterlife - The title character of Vicky Angel, causing her to linger on earth and haunt her best friend. She is finally granted access to heaven when she saves Jade from being hit by a car as Vicky was.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: At the end of Rose Rivers, it is being arranged for Rose to go to boarding school and get the education she wanted, but at the cost of losing her family. Even though Rose is getting what she wanted, she loses what she had.
  • In Glubbslyme, Rebecca wishes her school bully would get a terrible illness, only to be horrified when said girl then gets ill. She just hurt her ankle when she was wearing heels, but Rebecca feels terrible about it anyway.
  • In Clean Break Em is reunited with her stepfather but comes to an understanding that things cannot be the same between him and the family again. She even tells her mum that "wishes never come true the way you want."
• Berserk Button: Elsa's generally a sweet, cheerful girl, but don't insult her family.
  • Insinuating Tracy's mum doesn't love her or isn't as cool as Tracy says she is tends to send her into a tantrum, though by the end of The Dare Game Tracy admits her mother isn't really the maternal type and chooses to go back to live with Cam.
  • Normally timid Beauty Cookson manages to intimidate Skye, her primary bully, after Skye calls her mother a slag.
• Big Brother Bully: Will to Violet, one notable example being when he blindfolds her and then tricks her into entering an empty building full of bats.
• Big Sister Instinct: Jude tries to protect her youngest sister, Dixie. She endlessly argues with Rochelle, though.
  • Though she does leave her at one point in the story, Star won't tolerate anybody bullying Dolphin while she's around.
  • Jodie is very protective of Pearl. While Pearl got picked on a lot at school, she mentions that when Jodie was still in the juniors, no one would dare pick on her in the playground.
  • Although they aren't actually related, Hetty and Diamond consider themselves sisters and Hetty is very protective of Diamond.
  • Although they're the same age, Phil and Maddie react this way whenever they think Tina is threatened. It is not stated which triplet is the eldest, but justified since Tina is the smallest and weakest.
  • Another non-related example: Tanya recognizes that Mandy is getting bullied by Kim and intimidates her in a show of defense for Mandy.
• Big Eater:
  • Dorry in Katy has a huge appetite and will eat pretty much anything. Katy discovers he kept a "diary" that was basically just a list of what he ate that day.
  • Bella in Sleepovers easily eats the most out of any of the girls, and her birthday sleepover involves a huge tea party with tons of food. She bonds with Daisy's disabled sister Lily because they both like chocolate. Bella even calls herself fat at one point, but she adds that she doesn't care.
• Birthday Hater - April in Dustbin Baby, understandably so.
• Bittersweet Ending - Things generally get better for the protagonists throughout the course of the story, but often they have to acknowledge that life isn't perfect and/or sacrifice something important by the end. In Suitcase Kid, for example, Andy does end up slightly happier with her situation, but remarks wistfully that she still doesn't fully belong at any of her residences.

  • Leans more towards the positive however; Andy starts getting along much better with her step-siblings (especially Graham), befriends a kind elderly couple- who serve as surrogate grandparents in her life, and even welcomes her new half-sister into her life!

  • In Little Darlings, Destiny does get to meet her father, but she's fully aware that the meeting is basically a cynical public relations exercise on his part - she doesn't mind because she at least gets a chance to sing.
• Book Ends - Queenie begins with Elsie planning to go to the coronation of Elizabeth II with her grandmother; and ends sixty years later when Elsie expresses the hope that she'll live long enough to take her own granddaughter to Prince Charles's coronation.
• Brainless Beauty - Cassie Plumstead.
• Breakout Character - Hetty Feather, who has overtaken Tracy Beaker as Wilson's best known/most popular character. Word of God even states that Hetty is her favorite character.
• Brother–Sister Team - Violet and Will in Midnight, Hetty and Jem/Gideon in Hetty Feather, Dorry and Jonnie in Katy.
• Broken Bird: Ho boy, the majority of protagonists in Wilson's books are young girls going through some absolutely horrific things that no child should ever have to go through, but unfortunately many do in the UK and worldwide. To name a few, Tracy Beaker lives in a care home after being physically abused by her mum's boyfriend, Jade from Vicky Angel lives in poverty and suffers the death of her best and only friend, Magda and Nadine are almost date-raped in the Girls series, Dolphin and Star in The Illustrated Mum try to support their mentally unstable, alcoholic mother Marigold, Treasure from Secrets is disfigured by her violent stepdad, Beauty from Cookie and Jayni from Lola Rose also have violent fathers, and most if not all of these characters face bullying regularly at school.
• Broken Pedestal: Phoebe in The Primrose Railway Children looks up to her dad, but she becomes disillusioned and angry when she finds out he's in prison and doesn't even want to visit him.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Tyrone to Jess in My Mum Tracy Beaker. He bullies Jess multiple times, but then she knocks him over by accident and he declares they're now mates and he won't let his friends pick on her.
  • The driving plot behind The Butterfly Club.
• Calling Parents by Their Name:
  • Charlie in The Lottie Project calls her mother Jo by name because they are close in age.
  • In Katy, Katy's parents are suspicious of her new friend Imogen partly because Imogen calls her father by his given name.
  • Mandy in Bad Girls fantasizes about having young, "cool" parents and imagines that she'd call them by name.
  • In The Illustrated Mum, both Star and Dolphin call Marigold by her first name, but they don't draw too much attention to it.
  • April's friends in Dustbin Baby think it's cool that April calls Marion by her first name, but they don't know that she's actually a foster parent (which is why she'd rather April call her by name).
• Calling the Old Man Out: Knowing full well her father will beat her mother the moment she and Kenny go to bed, Jayni yells at him how she hates him for ruining everything. This is the catalyst that prompts him to hit her for the first time and for Nikki to run away with the kids.
  • Prudence calls out her Dad at the beginning of "Love Lessons", though he has a stroke minutes later and she feels terribly about if even though she was right.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Elsa in The Bed and Breakfast Star is funny, but she tries to keep her sister happy by telling a bunch of awful jokes. She only begins to make people laugh when she's not trying.
• Canon Foreigner: The Tracy Beaker TV series introduced several characters who weren't in the original books, especially in series 2 and onward once the show took a more original direction. The TV adaptation of Hetty Feather also introduces a new character called Mathias, a boy with whom Hetty conspires to organise a mass escape from the Foundling Hospital. Hetty is also given another friend named Mary, a younger girl and also gives focus on the boys in the hospital. Once the show shifts to Calender Hall, a whole new cast of characters original to the show are also introduced, leaving Hetty, Gideon, and Sheila as the only characters from the book.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin' - Very common, especially in Tracy Beaker books. An example spanning a whole book is Take a Good Look. Mary defies her grandmother's instructions not to go out alone just once (so she can go to buy sweets at a shop that's only a few minutes away) and ends up being taken hostage by armed robbers.
  • Another example that's a major plot point is Katy. Katy goes out on her own when she's supposed to be grounded, tries to build herself a rope swing - and falls off, severing her spine and paralysing herself for life. The trope is lampshaded by Helen later on when she points out that most kids would only have broken an arm or leg when they fell.
• Captain Ersatz: In Double Act, Ruby and Garnet audition for the TV adaptation of the St Clare's books. For the actual TV adaptation of Double Act, Enid Blyton's copyrighted characters couldn't be mentioned, so instead they audition for an obvious pastiche/duplicate called "The Terrible Tempest Twins"
• Career Versus Family / Career Versus Man - Touched upon a few times in the Girls series. In Girls Out Late, Ellie, Nadine and Magda are upset when they discover that their favourite pop star has given up her career to please her boyfriend. In Girls in Tears, Anna's career is a source of friction between her and Ellie's father; and it's mentioned that Ellie's mother gave up a promising career to raise her daughter.
  • This comes up in Emerald Star when Hetty chooses to go with the circus despite Jem's offer to marry her.
• Childhood Marriage Promise - In Hetty Feather, Hetty has one with Jem (and is upset initallywhen she learns that he subsequently promised to marry another of their foster sisters. However, she has surprisingly mature response when she reasons with herself that Jem was only trying to make them happy, and resolves to still take care of her foster sister despite feeling bitter) Sylvie and Carl had one in Kiss, but Carl later discovers he is gay, leading to heartbreak for Sylvie who had always believed he would grow up to fall in love with her.
• Chick Magnet: Sean in My Mum Tracy Beaker is very healthy and attractive man who ends up cheating on Tracy with Justine Littlewood.
• Cloud Cuckoolander - Lampshaded in Opal Plumstead when Cassie daydreams about being the wife of a man twice her age that she's been out with, and Opal tells her that she is living in "cloud-cuckoo-land".
• Coming-Out Story:
  • Kiss becomes this for Carl as he realizes he's gay and falls in love with a male friend.
  • Love Frankie focuses on Frankie falling in love with Sally and eventually coming out as a lesbian (although her family thinks she's too young to know that for sure.)
• Colour Coded Eyes: Clover Moon has green eyes. She sometimes uses them to convince people that she's a witch.
  • Hetty takes on the name Sapphire, which her mother gave her as a baby for the colour of her eyes.
  • Will in Midnight has green eyes and generally fits the symbolism associated with this trope. Becomes a plot point when Violet sees that in a baby photo "Will" had blue eyes - when he was past the age where they might naturally have changed colour.
• Cool Aunt: Although she's more of a Cool Godmother, Coral from Love Frankie takes on this role to Frankie and her sisters when she comes back to the UK.
  • Aunt Barbara in Lola Rose is an eccentric woman who wears colourful clothes and has many exciting stories about her life and travels. Jayni/Lola and Kenny see her as this trope, especially when she uses her skill in Thai boxing to get their abusive father to leave.
  • Aunt Susannah in Baby Love is much younger and trendier than Laura's own parents, but becomes especially important when she takes in Laura and Kathy so that Laura won't have to put Kathy up for adoption.
• Cool Teacher - Several, one prominent example being Mr. Speed in The Worry Website.
  • Mr. Harrison, the school librarian in The Illustrated Mum deserves a mention too.
  • The headteacher at Lola Rose's school is generally quite understanding.
  • Mr Raxberry (nicknamed "Rax" by his student), if you can look past the Squick of him and fourteen-year-old Prudence, although she is the initiator. He is shown to be very sweet caring towards all of his students and genuinely in touch with their worlds, and even the meanest, scariest girls at school like and respect him.
  • Miss Oliver from My Mum Tracy Beaker becomes this. She looks out for Jess and is very understanding when she gets popular after Tracy starts dating Sean and helping her after they break up. The two develop a friendship outside of school, especially after she and Cam become friends.
  • The art teacher in Girls Out Late. Ellie is thrilled when his girlfriend tells her she's his favourite student. He's also very considerate of Magda when she confesses her crush on him, dealing with the situation kindly and discreetly but professionally.
  • Mr Myers the PE teacher and Miss Lambert the librarian in Katy.
  • Miss Hope in Rent-a-Bridesmaid, though she prefers to keep her private life separate from her role as a teacher, is very kind and understanding towards Tilly.
  • Miss Simpkins, the art and drama teacher in Starring Tracy Beaker.
• Cosmetic Catastrophe
• Cute Bruiser - Tracy Beaker, Elsa in The Bed and Breakfast Star, Jude in The Diamond Girls, Gemma in Best Friends, Ruby in Double Act, Treasure in Secrets, Dolphin in The Illustrated Mum.
• Daddy's Girl: Mandy in Bad Girls loves her dad who loves her. She actually calls her father Daddy despite her age. She occasionally wishes she had different parents or was adopted, only to then feel terrible and go rushing back to her parents' sides.
  • Em in Clean Break adores her adoptive dad and is the closest to him of all her siblings, even though she's the only one that's not his biological daughter. She is devastated when he walks out on the family and the events of the book are driven by her desire to try to get him to return.
  • Barbara in Deep Blue is very close to her father, who has been coaching her to become an Olympic diving champion from a very early age. Part of the book's central conflict is her regret about ruining their bond after she decides she wants to give up diving.
  • Lolly in The Dream Palace dearly loved her now-absent father. In the present day, she's desperate to hang onto her memories of her relationship with him, and hangs around a now-disused hotel where he used to take her for tea. Subverted when Greg tries to help her re-live a day trip she took with her father, causing her to remember that he wasn't so perfect after all.
  • Floss is very close with her father, Charlie, so much so that her mother seems jealous at times of their bond. The fact that she chooses to stay with him instead of going to Australia with her mother is proof enough, although she makes it clear that his disorganized lifestyle and chip-related work leads to problems in Floss' school and social life throughout the book.
  • Phoebe in The Primrose Railway Children is the closest to her father, being the youngest and fond of playing imaginary games unlike her teenage sister and Literal-Minded brother. She takes it the hardest when she learns he is in prison, during which time she briefly decides she never wants to see him again.
  • Deconstructed with Jayni in Lola Rose who does love her dad, but can't get away from the fact that he's very violent to her mother (and has threatened Jayni himself), despite frequently proclaiming how much he loves his children. She also feels under pressure to act like this trope in case he gets angry with her for not showing enough affection.
  • Star in The Illustrated Mum meets her father for the first time and they instantly become very close, with Star quickly favouring him over Marigold. It's hinted that he's not the best at commitment, and that he might end up leaving her behind again.
• Death by Childbirth: In The Longest Whale Song, Ella's mother goes into a very dangerous and life-threatening coma from eclampsia after the birth of Ella's baby brother. The trope is ultimately averted as she wakes at the end of the book.
  • Ellen Jane's mother in Diamond, who insisted on having more and more babies until she got four sons (naming the first three Matthew, Mark and Luke and intending to call the fourth John). She died while giving birth to John, her sixth child.
• Death by Despair: In "The Power of the Shade", May's father died by suicide when she was a baby and her mother died very shortly afterwards, which May attributes to this trope. Subverted in that her mother seems to have already had health problems, and it's suggested her death could have been suicide too but May wasn't told the truth for obvious reasons.
• December–December Romance: Tilly's first job in Rent A Bridesmaid is a wedding for an elderly couple.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: The Longest Whale Song has Ella becoming friends with Martha after getting into a fight with her. Elsa in The Bed and Breakfast Star, Ruby in Double Act, and Tracy Beaker all become friends with groups of boys this way.
• Department of Child Disservices - Features in a few books. In Dustbin Baby they place April in a care home where she is viciously bullied (which the staff don't notice) and where other kids are actively committing crimes. Tracy Beaker is also placed in care at "The Dumping Ground", so-called because it's where kids are "dumped" when no one will adopt them, which woefully lacks funding and resources. In The Bed and Breakfast Star, local authorities house Elsa's family in a "bed and breakfast" hostel that is clearly not suitable for a family with three young children; and won't move Naomi's family out of the hostel even though the damp is aggravating her little brother's asthma. It’s not until the place burns down that Elsa and her family are finally moved somewhere better.
• Devil in Plain Sight - Dustbin Baby mentions that April was frequently tormented by a girl at the care home where she used to live, with all the carers seemingly blind to this and thinking the girls were best friends, until April pushed the girl down the stairs and put her in hospital.
  • Justine in the Tracy Beaker series.
  • Chloe in Sleepovers.
• Dirty Old Man: Jade's dad in Vicky Angel, who seems to have developed an extremely squicky crush on the now dead Vicky. Jade notices and is disgusted by it.
  • A man in Wave Me Goodbye gives Kevin and Shirley a ride. It is not stated outright, but it seems as if he has these intentions towards ten-year-old Shirley.
  • In Amber, Amber recounts a story of when she was younger (probably a pre-teen) and attracted the attention of a seemingly nice, much older man outside a chip shop; but he soon made her very uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her.
  • The man posing as Ellis to Nadine in Girls in Tears.
• Distant Finale: The epilogue of Queenie takes place sixty years after the main events of the story.
  • Similarly, the epilogue of Baby Love takes place over 60 years after the main story with a now-elderly Laura describing how society's view of teen pregnancy has changed over her lifetime.
• Distracted from Death: In Diamond, Ellen Jane misses her mother's death in childbirth because her father (whom Ellen Jane was supposed to bring home from the pub) forced her to stay and show off her gymnastic skills for his friends.
• Does Not Like Men: Jan in Falling Apart is an avowed feminist, dislikes men, and refuses to hang around with boys. When Simon tells Tina he only dated her because of a bet with a friend, he says he was dared to ask out her or Jan but Tina was obviously easier to get.
  • Charlie in The Lottie Project takes this stance and even has a girls' club about how girls are better than boys. She also wanted to extend the rules to men but her best friends argued this. However, she does soften later in the book, making friends with Jamie Edwards and tolerating Mark because she wants his son Robin to like her.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Toby in Love Lessons, even when Prudence makes it abundantly clear she's not interested in him and it makes Toby's Clingy Jealous Girl girlfriend physically attack her.
  • Gender-inverted with Marigold and Micky in The Illustrated Mum. Even though Micky has a girlfriend, Marigold is still in love with him and obsessed with trying to win his heart again.
  • To some extent, Jem towards Hetty in Emerald Star, as Hetty has realised that she's now lost any potential romantic feelings she might have had towards him.
• Domestic Abuse - Jayni/Lola's father in Lola Rose, and the titular character's father in Cookie.
  • Though not mentioned as physically abusive, Prudence's father in Love Lessons is extremely controlling and overbearing towards both his wife and daughters.
  • Mentioned fleetingly by Lisa in The Worry Website, but she can't bring herself to write it.
• Don't Split Us Up - Lily's motivation in Lily Alone.
  • Jayni in Lola Rose, and Star in The Illustrated Mum, refuse to get help when they are in trouble without a responsible adult around (Jayni's mother is in hospital being treated for breast cancer; Star's mother has bipolar disorder and can't take care of her children) out of fear of being taken into care and separated from their sibling. Although Star eventually does leave Dolphin for a while to be with her biological father, Micky.
  • Ruby and Garnet from Double Act are identical twins who like to do everything the same and always like to be together. After only Garnet gets accepted into a boarding school that they both applied to, Ruby gets very upset and makes herself different. However, she learns that it's okay for her and Garnet to be different. Although Garnet does end up going to the boarding school, she will still see Ruby on the holidays and they can keep in contact.
• Doorstop Baby - April of Dustbin Baby, who as the title suggests was actually found abandoned in a bin.
• Downer Ending - Not unheard of, particularly in My Sister Jodie, even if the birth of May adds a note of hope. Another book not immune to this was Lily Alone: whilst the books ends with Lily claiming that "we're all going to be together, very, very soon", just how accurate her statement is is left extremely ambiguous. Especially given the fact that Kate, Lily and her siblings' mother is arrested for both child neglect and credit card fraud, so social services might not trust her to be a parent.
  • Wilson's earlier novels were more prone to the Downer Ending; since she hit the big time with the first Tracy Beaker book, a Bittersweet Ending is more common.
  • Love Lessons is presented as one from Prue's perspective, because she doesn't end up with Mr. Raxberry, although adults reading the book would consider it a better ending for her than the alternative.
• Driven to Suicide - April's adoptive mother in Dustbin Baby, Tina in Falling Apart, and Tanya's mother in Bad Girls.
• Drugs Are Bad - In Rose Rivers, Nurse Budd uses a medicine to keep Beth compliant. Beth keeps asking for more, and Rose becomes concerned that there's something wrong. She eventually discovers that the substance has Opium in it, and Beth has become addicted to it. The doctor states that Rose may have saved her life by consulting him.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness - In Dustbin Baby, April goes to visit the grave of her adoptive mother, whose headstone has a picture of her on her wedding day. April notes how bright her adoptive mother's eyes are in the picture, and sadly reflects that they didn't look at all like that when April knew her.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Janet in Hetty Feather. The first book has Jem mentioning that his teacher whipped Janet, a friend of his, because she had trouble getting her ds and bs to face the right way. When Hetty returns to the village in the third book, she actually gets to meet Janet, who turns out to be a lovely young woman who now teaches because she remembers how hard school was for her.
• Easily Forgiven - Ellie must have a hugely forgiving personality, since she forgives some pretty vicious treatment from best friend Nadine, and forgives Magda and Russel, her other best friend and boyfriend for kissing behind her back at a party.
  • Violet forgives Jasmine and Will for their deception disappointingly quickly in Midnight. Although Jasmine clearly did like Violet for her own sake, her desperation to visit Violet's home was all about her desire to get closer to Will. YMMV as to whether or not this makes her worse than Violet's old friends Marnie and Terry, who tried the same thing (albeit unsuccessfully,) without having engaged Violet's feelings.
  • A lot of the characters in her books forgive their friends and loved ones extremely easily: Garnet forgives Ruby almost instantaneously for all of her bullying, Tracy treats her mother like an angel despite all the pain she causes her, and the one time Jade doesn't forgive her best friend Vicky for being horrible to her, she dies. In some cases, the girls have learnt to stand up for themselves by the end of the book, in others, they simply don't.
  • Biscuits forgives Gemma in Best Friends for bullying, ignoring and stalking him, which she did because she blamed him for foiling her and Alice's escape attempt, which he didn't even do intentionally. Gemma lampshades this out loud, to which Biscuits replies jokingly that he enjoyed making her feel guilty.
  • Lily and her siblings are forgiving of their mother in Lily Alone, despite the fact that their problems were both directly and indirectly her fault. Social Services and the police, not so much.
• Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Happens to many characters when they become stressed. However, this happens regularly to Kevin in Wave Me Goodbye. He eventually manages to overcome it by getting up every two hours.
  • A very interesting aversion in Clover Moon: On Clover's first night at the Home, the other girls pour water over her mattress. Clover changes the sheets in the middle of the night, but then becomes worried she might wet it, but doesn't.
• Embarrassing First Name - Ellie's brother Benedict (known as Eggs) in the Girls books. Lampshaded in Katy, where Katy states that Dorry (Dorian) and Jonnie (Johanna-with-a-silent-H) go by nickname because their full names are so silly.
• Even the Guys Want Him - Midnight: "All the girls at my school are in love with Will. And some of the boys."
  • Mab in Project Fairy mentions that her little brother is so popular with his classmates that both the girls and boys want him to be their "boyfriend."
• Even Evil Has Standards: While "Pinch Face" of Buried Alive isn't really evil, just nasty, he is shown to be shocked by "Prickle Head" threatening to hit Tim in the head with a metal spade! He is also more grateful than his "friend" when Tim saves his life.
• Eye Scream: In Emerald Star, Gideon is discharged from the army because he lost an eye in the course of duty (and is close to losing the sight in the other one.) This apparently happened due to having so much guilt about shooting another man that he kept seeing it, so he attempted to blind himself.
• Faint in Shock: Phoebe Robinson faints after she successfully prevents the train accident in The Primrose Railway Children. It helps that she hadn't eaten at all that day.
• Fairytale Motifs - Violet in Midnight, Ellie in the Girls series, May in The Power of the Shade, Opal in Opal Plumstead
• Family Relationship Switcheroo - In The Power of the Shade, May's "great-aunt" turns out to be her grandmother, who had an affair with her sister's husband.
  • Dancing The Charleston has an example: Mona's "aunt" is really her mother and just pretended to be an aunt to cover up her illegitimate pregnancy.
• Fat Idiot - Inverted in most cases:
  • Biscuits is actually pretty smart.
  • In Vicky Angel, Jade initially thinks of Sam as a Fat Idiot, but he turns out to be not just a Big Fun Guy, but also intelligent.
  • Mr. Harrison from The Illustrated Mum is shown to be quite intelligent, and even manages to stop Dolphin and Oliver from getting into trouble with their teacher.
  • Ellie in the Girls series is described as overweight, and while her common sense can be questionable, it is shown several times that she is more intelligent than her two skinny friends, especially when it comes to meeting boys.
  • India from Secrets is overweight, but also comes top at school despite it being ultra-academic. At the end of the book, she mentions an IQ test she took, where she scored 150.
• Father, I Want to Marry My Brother - Violet in Midnight. Borders on Big Brother Attraction when she admits that at age fourteen she still harbours hopes of them living together when they grow up. Will is adopted, but Violet didn't know this for most of her life, and still sees him as a big brother.
• Fiery Redhead - Charlie and Lottie in The Lottie Project, Hetty Feather, and Vicky in Vicky Angel all count.
  • People assume India from Secrets is this, but she usually averts it, noting that she plays it straight only when defending Anne Frank's diary against the girls in her class. She remarks on this to her educational psychologist, who also has red hair and he admits people also think the same of him.
  • Marigold in The Illustrated Mum would count as one, although subverted when Dolphin later discovers Marigold is actually a natural brunette.
• Foregone Conclusion - in Vicky Angel, Vicky is still alive in the first chapter or two - but from the title alone, what do you think is going to happen to her?
  • In My Sister Jodie, Jodie dies two chapters from the end - but this is given away in some versions of the blurb.
• Freudian Excuse: Selma from The Butterfly Club is a bully because her mother and stepfather abuse her.
  • It's implied in Buried Alive! that the bully who picks on Tim has abusive parents, who are witnessed shouting at and hitting him and his siblings, apparently giving him extra slaps. While his accomplice appears to be frightened of him, AND have some limits.
  • Martha in The Longest Whale Song repeatedly taunts Ella that her mother will be in a coma indefinitely but after seeing how her mother and stepfather treat her, Ella realises that she's being horrible because she's unhappy.
• Full-Name Basis - In My Mum Tracy Beaker, Jess constantly refers to Tracy's boyfriend by his full name, despite everyone telling her she can call him by just his first name. This is meant to show that she doesn't feel comfortable around him, despite not knowing why.
  • After Megs dies in Clover Moon, the priest at her funeral exclusively refers to her by her full name of Margaret Anne Moon. Clover is confused for a while since she never thought of her by any name other than Megs.
• G-Rated Sex - Occurs in some of the author's earlier novels aimed at teens (such as Falling Apart and The Dream Palace). Usually done in a slightly confusing way whereby a normal scene occurs (such as the couple going for a walk or hanging out in the guy's room) with nothing untoward described, and then the protagonist casually mentions later that sex took place in the middle of the scene.
  • Baby Love only mentions Leon pulling at Laura's clothes before she pushes him off and runs away, and then she recounts what happened in her head to make it clear what actually happened. There may be some kind of Bilingual Bonus here, as it implies that he asked for permission in French, but Laura didn't understand one of the words, assuming it meant "cuddle".
• Gene Hunting:
  • The main plot of Dustbin Baby is that April, who was abandoned as a baby, spends her 14th birthday trying to track down her biological mother. She is not successful.
  • Wilson's first book for children, Nobody's Perfect, involved a girl looking for her biological father.
  • Hetty Feather does this twice: looking for her mother in Hetty Feather, and her father in Emerald Star. She finds both.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Apparently, all the high school boys in Love Frankie think this. When they hear about Frankie and Sally's kiss on New Years, they all want them to kiss again so they can watch. One boy even asks Frankie out just because he wants details.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion:
  • In This Girl, Deb gives a little speech about how she refused to have an abortion on moral grounds, even though this left her as a penniless teenage single mother.
  • This mentality is very much present in Baby Love due to the mores of the time period (and the fact that abortion was illegal and mostly available only to wealthier women.) It's implied that Aunt Susannah once had a backstreet abortion and was "punished" by being left unable to have any more children.
• Goth:
  • Nadine dresses like one in the Girls series.
  • Gemma's older brother Jack in Best Friends, to the point where Gemma thinks he might be a vampire.
• Good Parents: Happily, there are just as many examples as abusive ones, such as Jo, Charlie's mother, in The Lottie Project; Floss's dad in Candyfloss; Beauty's mother Dilly in Cookie; Katy's father in Katy. Realistically this doesn't mean that they get on all the time, or that their children never have bad experiances, but all are shown to be dedicated parents who support and care for their kids physically and emotionally.
• Grass is Greener: In This Girl, the heroine, fed up with her impoverished existence, becomes a nanny for a rich family who live in a grand house. She soon finds out their life is not as picture-perfect as she thought.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold:
  • Floss in Candyfloss, especially compared with black haired Alpha Bitch Rhiannon.
  • Mandy in Bad Girls, again contrasted with black-haired Alpha Bitch Kim.
  • Alice in Best Friends who is also contrasted to the brunette tomboyish Gemma.
  • Polly from Hetty Feather is particularly kind, proper and sensitive, contrasted with fiery ambitious Hetty - in fact, her sensitivity is the catalyst to their friendship.
• Handicapped Badass - Mary in Take a Good Look, a partially sighted teen who escapes armed robbers holding her hostage.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": In The Worst Thing About My Sister, Marty creates a superhero named "Mighty Mart", which is clearly based on herself.
  • Phoebe in The Primrose Railway Children makes up and draws a story about a nineteenth-century family, clearly based upon her own family. The main character Philomena is "breathtakingly beautiful," clever and a favourite with everybody.
• Hide Your Lesbians:
  • The ending of This Girl implies Coral and Deb have become a couple, though the subject isn't explicitly discussed.
  • Subverted in My Mum Tracy Beaker when Cam mentions attending a "ceremony" she went to involving two of her female friends, implying that it was their wedding. Played straight however with Cam seeming to develop a relationship with Miss Oliver, Jess's teacher, implied only through innuendos throughout the story.
  • Subverted in Love Frankie where, although never explicitly described as a lesbian, Frankie openly dates Sally for a while and firmly tells her family that she is only attracted to girls.
  • In Falling Apart, Jan is strongly suggested to be a lesbian. Simon even admits he accepted a bet to ask out either her or Tina, but chose Tina because there's no way Jan would ever accept.
• Hippie Parents: In Amber, Amber was raised in a commune by her hippie mother and is still there even though the '60s are long over. She is desperate for a "normal" home and lifestyle, which drives a lot of the story's conflict.
• Honorary Uncle: Mona in Dancing The Charleston considers Mr Benjamin one. He is eventually revealed to be her real uncle.
  • Tracy Beaker had a foster carer known as Aunt Peggy.
  • In Rent a Bridesmaid, Tilly mentions that "Auntie" Sue who takes care of her after school is not related to her, just a friend of her dad.
  • Many stepparents, particularly in the early books, expect their stepchildren to call them aunt or uncle. Frankie's grandma in Love Frankie also advises her grandchildren to address their dad's fiancée as such. Stepparents that try not to force titles on their steppchildren generally get along better with them.
• Hopeless with Tech: Quite a few characters in these novels are, presumably because it's not the author's strong suit either, though in some cases it's justified, as in Love Lessons, Prudence explains her father is ridiculously old-fashioned and can barely stand having a phone, let alone a T.V or computer.
• Ho Yay: Many protagonists in Wilson's books, especially female ones, tend to have a big adoration for at least one other female character, and quite a few times it's the friendship between these two that drives the story - Best Friends has Gemma and Alice, Tracy Beaker has Tracy and Louise, Cookie has Beauty and Rhona, the list goes on. Vicky Angel is much more explicit about this, as Jade consistently fawns over Vicky even when she's dead and talks about her the way someone would talk about their soul mate.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Russell in the Girls series is considerably bigger than Ellie and at one point says he likes how small she is. This pleases Ellie, who's always felt bigger and uglier than Nadine and Magda.
  • Cam's friends Jane and Liz in the Tracy Beaker series (who, as of My Mum Tracy Beaker, are seemingly married) are an example of the same gender. Jane is described as tall and heavyset while Liz is short.
• Huge Schoolgirl - Ellie, who is embarrassed about her weight and large bust. Nadine, who's mentioned as very tall, may also count. Katy in Katy is also stated to be exceptionally tall for her age, although this is less noticeable after she has to use a wheelchair.
• I Can't Feel My Legs! - The title character of Katy, after breaking her back in a fall.
  • Dixie in the finale of The Diamond Girls, after catching Mary and breaking both legs. Her mother reassures her that she's young and will heal in no time.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship:
  • At the end of Emerald Star, Jem tries to propose to Hetty, but she turns him down this way because she knows she can't love him romantically.
  • Carl uses this as a reason why he doesn't want to kiss Sylvie early on.
• I Just Want to Be Normal - Barbara in Deep Blue has spent her life training to be an Olympic diving champion, and feels that she has missed out on "normal" experiences as a result. This trope causes her to use a minor accident at the pool as an excuse to quit diving so that she can attend parties and hang out with boys like a regular girl of her age.
• I "Uh" You, Too - Hetty and Gideon do this in the TV adaptation of Hetty Feather.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Done with some of the early books. Jacqueline Wilson stated that giving every book themed chapters became too hard and now sticks to regular chapters.
  • Examples include The Suitcase Kid where every chapter is named after a letter of the alphabet, starting with 'A is for Andy' and ending with 'Z is for Zoe'
  • All the Girls books do this. Girls In Love names every chapter title after the numbers 1-9 as they relate to Ellie ("one girl", "two best friends" and so on); "Girls Under Pressure" has epithets such as "model girl" or "problem girl"; Girls Out Late themes its chapters around the concept of time and "Girls In Tears" around things that have made one of the characters cry (each chapter follows the template of "Girls cry when ___")
• Important Haircut:
  • In Double Act, Ruby cuts all her hair to make her look different from her twin sister. This signals how the twins are starting to become more individual. Garnet tries to copy Ruby but Ruby threatens her not to.
  • Jade gets a new haircut in Vicky Angel, signifying the beginning of her efforts to break away from Vicky's hold over her and the person she used to be.
  • Beauty in Cookie wanted to have her hair cut early on. She eventually has it cut in a pageboy bob, as a signal of her breaking free from her father's domineering and painful influence and the confidence that can bloom as a result of it.
  • Mandy in Bad Girls spends most of the story wanting a haircut in order to rebel against her parents, who dress her in childish clothing and put her hair in pigtails. At the end of the story, her mother says that if it's really important to her, she can get the haircut she wants, since she's growing up and it is her haircut.
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • In the Girls series, Ellie has a crush on a handsome guy who turns out to be gay, leading to embarrassment for her when she pretends to her friends that he is her boyfriend Dan (the real Dan being awkward and nerdy.) She and the gay guy do become good friends though.
  • Falling Apart implies Simon may have lost interest in Tina because he's secretly in a relationship with his friend Adam. In the same book, he says he didn't try to ask out her sister Jan because Jan (heavily suggested to be a lesbian) obviously wouldn't accept.
  • In Kiss, Sylvie has always believed herself to be in love with Carl and believed he'd eventually return her affections. When he comes out as gay, she then has to deal with the fact that the future she envisaged for them isn't going to come true.
  • Frankie's friend Sam in Love, Frankie believes he's fallen in love with her, but as Frankie comes to realise she is a lesbian, Sam has to accept that she'll never return his feelings.
• Innocent Inaccurate - Several cases of this. Among the most poignant are April in Dustbin Baby, who doesn't realise her depressed mother has committed suicide in the bathtub and Verity in The Cat Mummy when she tries to mummify her dead cat after learning about Egyptian mummies at school, and can't understand why her family is horrified at finding out what she's done
  • An odd example in Little Darlings. It's Destiny's mum who's the innocent one. She met Danny Kilman, the famous rock star she had a crush on, at one of his gigs when she was eighteen, leading to Destiny's conception. Eleven years later she still thinks it was a serious, albeit brief, relationship; despite all evidence pointing to it being a one-night stand.
  • In Love Lessons, Prue's affair with Mr. Raxberry is exposed when Sarah, a student with an intellectual disability, tells everyone that she saw them kissing. Sarah doesn't understand that this isn't supposed to happen, and even Prue (who is otherwise selfish and aggressive) can't be angry with her.
  • The Longest Whale Song has Ella almost drown when trying to swim underwater and not coming up for air early enough because a whale wouldn't need to, apparently not understanding that humans have a different lung capacity. Even when she hears that she nearly drowned, she feels confused because she was only underwater for a minute.
  • In Baby Love, Laura gets pregnant after (technically) a one night stand with her baby's father. Due to the values of the time period, she doesn't quite understand what sex is or how pregnancy happens (exacerbated by the conception happening in a dark closet space so she couldn't properly see what was happening.) She believes they basically just made out, and is ignorant of what really happened until her pregnancy becomes obvious to others.
• Inspirationally Disadvantaged - Defied by Katy, Wilson's modern re-imagining of What Katy Did. Wilson has publicly stated that she is concerned about the original novel (as well as other children's classics such as The Secret Garden and Heidi) giving the message that disabled people can physically heal by learning to become "good."
  • Helen has some shades of the trope, as she is a renowned academic and writer - although she makes it clear that she isn't a genius, and got where she is through hard work.
  • The idea that this is a concerning trope is voiced by Mrs Wilberforce in My Sister Jodie, who is confined to a wheelchair and is extremely bitter about it. Once Pearl reads The Secret Garden, she ends up reading two more books that feature protagonists similar to Colin who learn to walk after being confined to a wheelchair for a long time.
• Ironic Name: Prudence in Love Lessons, who is pretty much anything but a prude. Her teacher lampshades this. Similarly, her sister Grace is not particularly graceful.
• Irony: The Illustrated Mum has two instances of this trope. Marigold never talks about Michael, but obsesses over Micky to the point of actually wanting only the latter to come back and help raise a family. Towards the end of the story, it is Michael who turns out to be not just the understanding boyfriend that Marigold needs, but also the ideal father figure that both of her daughters desperately want. Micky, on the other hand, does not want to rekindle his romance with Marigold, and is not able to maintain a stable family unit. Marigold favors Star over Dolphin in certain situations because of their fathers, but it is Dolphin who has all the positive interactions with Marigold, and salvages the whole family when the title character's bipolar disorder gets too difficult to handle. As Dolphin herself points out, it is Star who triggers Marigold's negative moods.
• I Resemble That Remark!: In Love Frankie, Gary Masters tries to kiss Frankie at a party, but she pushes him away because she's worried that he's going to spill beer on her new jacket. She accuses him of thinking girls would do anything to snog him, and he immediately proves this by stating that trying to snog her was a favour to cheer her up.
• Karma Houdini: It's mainly due to Rule of Drama, but schools and teachers in Wilson's books get away with murder, at least by modern day standards. Apparently nobody thinks to lodge a complaint against bullying or abusive teachers, so the main characters just suffer in silence.
  • In The Butterfly Club a teacher deliberately sits the sickly and weak main character next to a physically aggressive bully. Her mother complains several times, and eventually the teacher rearranges her table setting, but only after several incidents.
  • In Katy, the title character is withdrawn from a class without the consent of, or even discussion with, the pupil and her family, purely on the say-so of somebody else's mother.
  • In Love Lessons the underage main characters bears the brunt of the blame for her illicit relationship with a teacher...who avoids an investigation and keeps his job despite pursuing a romantic relationship with a very sheltered and socially awkward fourteen year old. To be fair, Prue lied about how much he reciprocated to protect him and it worked.
• Jailbait Taboo: Some of the other girls in Baby Love are likely to have gotten their children this way, but Sarah in particular tells Laura that her baby's father was a Sunday School teacher. Tragically, she believes she made him do it because he was attracted to her and prays every night to make sure no other men are attracted to her. She is fifteen years old when she arrives at Heathcote House while pregnant, under the age of consent.
• Kick the Dog: During an argument in Lola Rose about Jake, Lola Rose points out that he's closer to her age than he is to her mum's. Nikki responds by insinuating that Lola Rose would never be pretty enough to land a good-looking guy like Jake, leading Lola Rose to storm out in tears. Fortunately Nikki does apologise for being so horrible to her later.
  • Nadine does this to Ellie quite a lot in the Girls series, a standout example being when Ellie points out how stupid it is to trust a guy online and he could be having creepy fantasies about her in a bikini, Nadine retorts that Ellie's just jealous because she's too fat for anybody to imagine her in a bikini - even worse when you consider Ellie struggled with Bulimia in Girls Under Pressure.
• Kiddie Kid:
  • Perry in The Primrose Railway Children sometimes comes across as younger than his little sister Phoebe in some of his behaviours, i.e, demanding to do things right away, repeating sentences over and over, having a meltdown if he gets overwhelmed or completely failing to grasp the danger of entering a tunnel while a train is coming through it. However much of this behaviour is consistent with him being on the autism spectrum and in other respects he can come across as quite mature for his age.
  • Mandy in Bad Girls is very sheltered and her parents make her dress like a much younger child. As a result, she's noticeably immature for her age, which is part of the reason Kim and her gang bully her.
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: In The Werepuppy, the story starts when Micky and his sisters watch a werewolf movie. The movie leaves Micky terrified of dogs.
• Lame Pun Reaction - Elsa gets a number of these in The Bed and Breakfast Star; she wants to be a comedian, but all the jokes she knows are incredibly cheesy. She later discovers people find her more entertaining when she's not actively trying to be funny.
• Last Disrespects: While not an intentional example, Clover in Clover Moon is deeply upset by the behaviour of the priest at Megs' funeral, who refers to her by her full name (which she never used, to the point where Clover is initially confused) and gives an eulogy that makes it clear he didn't know the first thing about her. Clover considers this very disrespectful and knows it's not at all what Megs would have wanted.
• Lethally Stupid: The Longest Whale Song features a scene where Ella tries to swim like a whale, and almost drowns because she doesn't realize humans have a different lung capacity, and doesn't come up for air when she needs to. Ella is implied to be at an age where this kind of misconception is likely. Ella's behaviour throughout the book is consistent with her age being the reason for many of her flawed actions.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition - In Midnight, Violet owns a first edition copy of The Smoke Fairy by Casper Dream, which is now highly prized by collectors (it is his first published work and only a few copies exist, as it was subsequently banned from sale.) Violet's aware of how valuable it would be, but treasures it so much that she will never sell it.
• Love Father, Love Son - the title character in Amber has a short relationship with her mother's ex-boyfriend, who believes Amber is pregnant (though he's not the father), and wants to marry her and raise the baby together. Amber's mother isn't at all happy with this idea.
• Love Makes You Crazy: In quite a few, but particularly in The Illustrated Mum between Marigold and Micky. Apparently they were only together for a few weeks before Marigold became pregnant with Star, yet years afterwards she still yearns for Micky and her driving force behind her actions in the novel is for the sake of pleasing him.
• Loving a Shadow - A few examples:
  • Destiny's mother in Little Darlings didn't really know the father of her daughter, and was caught up in a fantasy she associated with his being a rock star.
  • In the first book of the Girls series, Ellie falls hard for Kevin, an older boy she has seen around town but never really met or spoken to. She later develops a relationship with Dan (a boy her own age) and has to accept that Kevin will never live up to her romantic fantasies as he is gay; however, Ellie and Kevin do form a genuine platonic friendship.
  • Marigold from The Illustrated Mum has idolized Micky as the love of her life for years, but fails to realize that he does not want anything to do with her. Micky is more interested in his daughter, Star, and is implied to find Marigold's unusual ways intolerable. Marigold got together with Michael, Dolphin's father, mostly because he had nearly the same name.
  • Sylvie in Kiss believes she's in love with her friend Carl and that they will get married when they grow up. As they become teenagers, Sylvie clings to her image of him, unable to understand that he's changing as a person and has fallen for a guy.
  • Drives the plot of Falling Apart. Tina falls for the older, more socially advanced Simon and soon convinces herself that he is the love of her life. She is unable to see that he is not the person she thinks he is, and that to him their relationship is just a casual fling. It doesn't end well when he breaks up with her.
• Manipulative Bastard: Most of the abusive parents. However, special mention goes to Will of Midnight. There's something subtly and deeply troubling about the way he treats Violet that borders on horrific, Freudian Excuse or not. There's little chance that you'll read the section about the blindfold game and not at least suspect that Will's a sadist.
• Market-Based Title: Elsa, Star of the Shelter was changed to The Bed and Breakfast Star in reprints, to reflect the change in accommodation offered to families like Elsa's.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy - Hetty and Gideon in Hetty Feather. Highlighted in one scene where their foster father tells them that, when they leave the Foundling Hospital, Hetty will go to work as a housemaid and Gideon as a soldier or sailor. They both agree they would each rather go into the opposite profession.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane - The Power of the Shade and The Other Side, where it's left open to the reader whether May and Alison really have supernatural powers (although the latter book more strongly implies that Alison uses fantasies of astral projection as a coping mechanism.)
  • Before the start of the "Vicky Angel", Wilson states that many people have asked her if Vicky is really there, or if it is just Jade's imagination. She says that "You will have to make up your own mind!"
  • Rebecca casts a 'curse' on a girl she dislikes in Glubbslyme, then feels awful when she twists her ankle and brings has a magical "poppet" to fix it.
  • Tracy and Cam concoct a 'charm to be with a loved one on a festive occasion' for Christmas. Tracy neglects to mention her mother's name during it and ends up spending the day with Cam. She later wonders if she was Cam's loved one and if the charm actually did work.
  • Similarly to Vicky Angel, it's not clear if Tansy from The Girl Who Wasn't There is a real ghost or made up. Aurora only starts talking about her after reading her story and has a very overactive imagination, so it's possible she made her up. However, Luna thinks she sees an apparition of Tansy at the end, which suggests she might have been real all along.
• Meaningful Name - In The Illustrated Mum, it turns out that Dolphin was named for the fact that her father was the one who finally taught Marigold how to swim. This is especially heartwarming because Marigold claims to not remember much about him.
  • Violet in Midnight is shy.
• Meaningful Rename - the end of Lola Rose implies that Jayni will continue living as Lola Rose, an identity she struggled to live up to for most of the book.
  • A minor example in The Werepuppy where Micky has a sister called Mona who is always complaining, and is always described as "moaning".
  • Hetty Feather has a couple of these, going by the aliases "Sapphire Battersea", "Emerald Greenwich" and "Emerald Star." In the final book of the series, Ellen Jane has one too and becomes Diamond.
• Missing Mom - Hetty Feather centres around the heroine, an ostensibly abandoned Victorian girl, trying to find her mother. She does.
  • In the Girls series, it is mentioned that Ellie's low self-esteem is partly due to her mother's death.
  • Several of Wilson's other heroines also have dead mothers, including Verity (The Cat Mummy) and Ruby and Garnet (Double Act.) Tracy Beaker, who was abandoned by her mother, may count as well, and Allison in The Other Side whose mother is mentally ill and goes into hospital at the start of the book.
  • Tilly from Rent a Bridesmaid has a mother who has been absent from the family for at least a year and a half.
  • April in Dustbin Baby is haunted by the question of why her birth mother abandoned her and is traumatised by her adoptive mother's suicide.
• Monochrome Casting: All of her lead characters are white, as are most of the supporting characters, with the occasional Token Minority. Admittedly, the population of the UK is over 80% white.
• Moral Guardians - Referenced In-Universe in Midnight, where Violet mentions that Casper Dream's first book ("The Smoky Fairy") was recalled because of concerns that it encouraged smoking in children.
• Most Writers Are Writers - Most of the protagonist characters are either aspiring writers or aspiring artists.
• The Münchausen - Tracy Beaker, sort of. The tall tales she tells are about her mother rather than herself.
• My Beloved Smother:
  • Mandy in Bad Girls has one.
  • Mary in Take a Good Look has a grandmother who won't let her do anything (use scissors, go to a nearby shop, or even get out of bed while she's recovering from a cold) because Mary is partially sighted.
  • In "The Greatest Sleepover in the World", Daisy and Lily's mother becomes very overprotective as Lily, who's disabled, becomes a teenager and wants to do normal teenage things. When Lily becomes best friends with another girl at her special school, her mother's shocked that other kids with disabilities are allowed to do things like go to sleepovers or hang out with friends.
• Naked First Impression: Although Kitty and Lucy briefly meet early in the story, their true first meeting is just after a woman has stolen all the clothes Lucy was wearing. Kitty finds it amusing, but she's also sympathetic.
• Naked People Trapped Outside: In The Runaway Girls, a woman attacks Lucy and steals all her clothes, including her underthings, leaving her naked and too humiliated to try and get home. Luckily, Kitty lets her borrow her frock and doesn't seem to mind walking around in her shift.
• National Stereotypes: Referenced and averted in Secrets when India says that you might think her au pair, who's Australian, would be cheerful, suntanned and outgoing. She is actually sullen, pale-skinned and doesn't like talking to anyone - usually leaving India alone to do what she likes.
• Near-Death Clairvoyance - In Vicky Angel, Vicky describes her experience of leaving her body and watching others in the hospital when she first died.
• Never Learned to Talk: In Sleepovers, Daisy's sister Lily has never learned to talk because of her disability. Subverted in The Greatest Sleepover In the World, where Lily has now been taught to communicate via Makaton and become much more outgoing and sociable.
• No Infantile Amnesia: Hetty Feather claims to remember being a baby, specifically being given up as a newborn by her mother in Hetty Feather.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Ella in The Longest Whale Song overhears her friend Sally talking about how she's become mean and moody after her mother's coma and hears another girl Dory agree that her friend Martha was "just the same." She later learns that Martha has an abusive home life. While Ella's own stepfather and mother are not abusive, she recognises that Martha is probably feeling as miserable as herself, which causes her to make the effort to be friends instead of enemies.
• No Social Skills: A huge part of Prudence's problems in Love Lessons, when she is incapable of fitting in with others thanks to years of homeschooling and her own rather headstrong attitude. Ironically, her younger sister ends up happy and makes friends easily even though she is frequently considered 'slow' by her family.
  • Played with India in Secrets, who is very intelligent but sometimes veers into Innocently Insensitive behaviour. Some characters are more sympathetic about it than others.
• No Sympathy - Nadine and Magda often behave this way towards Ellie in the Girls series. Several sets of parents - particularly Andy's in The Suitcase Kid and Sunset's in Little Darlings (though only to Sunset and not her younger siblings) - show a woeful lack of empathy as well. Though in "The Suitcase Kid", they are well-intentioned.
  • Alice's mother in Best Friends is incredibly insensitive towards how much the move is distressing her Alice and Gemma, who have been best friends since birth. And Gemma's mum's no angel either, being so critical of Gemma and Alice running off together, although this is a certain amount of JerkassHasAPoint, and AngerBornOfWorry.
• Not Blood Siblings - Jem and Hetty in Hetty Feather were foster siblings, although Jem ends up marrying someone else.
• Old Maid: It is mentioned in Clover Moon that Mildred was considered this in her early thirties, and married Clover's father just to avoid the stigma.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Happens in Baby Love. Leon and Laura meet once, then Leon disappears from the story and he's never seen again, while Laura has to deal with her pregnancy, even though she's only fourteen.
  • By all appearances, this is how Destiny in Little Darlings was conceived.
  • In Dustbin Baby, April reflects that this might be the reason why her mother abandoned her.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in different books - in both Queenie and Wave Me Goodbye, the protagonists mention they are bullied by an Alpha Bitch. Both characters are called Marilyn, and their surnames both start with H, and they both serve the same purpose.
  • There's a few other instances in different books, such as Treasure's stepfather from Secrets and Dixie's father from The Diamond Girls also having the same name, but in most cases, one of the characters has so little impact on the story (or they are referred to by a different name) that it doesn't cause confusion.
• Orphanage of Fear - The Foundling Hospital in Hetty Feather. Also the children's home Elsie remembers from when she was little in Queenie.
  • The correctional facility in The Runaway Girls is a glorified workhouse for children too young to be in the real thing, and is shown to be as bad or worse.
• Paparazzi - In Little Darlings, Destiny's celebrity dad has been getting negative press attention from them, so decides to use her in a PR stunt to improve his image.
  • Referenced in Vicky Angel where Jade discovers that a newspaper has taken pictures of her without her consent, and run a factually incorrect piece about her as part of the coverage of Vicky's death. Ghost Vicky even points this out.
    "Trust them to get it wrong! It's a wonder they got my name right!"
• Parental Bonus - a less light-hearted: a lot of the issues dealt with in the books are subtle enough for the target demographic to miss, but which an older reader will pick up(or suddenly remember in a bout of Fridge Brilliance)
• Parental Favoritism: Ellie worries that Eggs is both her father's and Anna's favourite. Nadine thinks that her sister Natasha is their parents' favorite, given that her mother is less harsh on Natasha than on Nadine herself.
  • Prudence is her father's favourite in Love Lessons, but he barely treats her any better than her mother or sister.
  • Marigold in The Illustrated Mum genuinely likes Dolphin, but favors the much more critical Star. This favoritism is suggested to stem from the fathers; Marigold prefers Micky (Star's father) to Michael (Dolphin's father). Dolphin knows this and feels sad as well as lonely.
  • In Waiting For the Sky to Fall, Katherine is her father's favourite, but this has the negative effect of causing him to put her under intense pressure to do well in her exams.
  • In Katy, Katy states that she thinks her sister Clover is their father's favourite child, although he says he doesn't have one.
  • In "The Suitcase Kid", Andy reflects that her stepfather Bill treats ten-year-old Katie like an angel and acts like she can do no wrong when she's actually incredibly mean (Andy is the only one who gets in trouble when she and Katie fight). In contrast, he nags his older daughter Paula and appears to not even like Graham. Graham even recounts a story when Katie gave him a black eye and he got in trouble for it - not because he provoked her (he didn't), but because he couldn't hold his own against her.
  • In Opal Plumstead, Opal's mother's actions make it clear she prefers Cassie to Opal. Opal doesn't really care, but she also believes that her father also can't help liking Cassie more, which bothers her.
• Parental Neglect - Happens a lot:
  • The most obvious example is Dustbin Baby where April's mother, who had serious depression, could not look after her and left the five or six-year-old April to attempt to cook for herself, do her own washing and get herself to school.
  • Tracy Beaker, and Elsie in Queenie, end up being taken into children's homes because they had been left at home alone by their mothers (although in Elsie's case, she's able to go and live with her grandmother.)
  • In Lily Alone, Lily's mother is deliberately neglectful and leaves Lily (who is only eleven years old) alone at home to take care of her three preschool-aged siblings. She eventually goes on holiday expecting her ex-boyfriend to babysit, without having asked him first and unaware that he is also on holiday. This leaves the children alone at home with the prospect of being stuck by themselves for two weeks. The predictable happens when it ends with Lily and her siblings taken into foster care, and their mother charged with child neglect and (from a previous incident) credit card fraud.
  • Jayni's mother in Lola Rose leaves her two young children alone while she works a bar job late at night, eventually leaving them for several days when she goes into hospital for an operation (although they are able to trace their estranged aunt, and get help.) Most on the time this isn't deliberate, though Jayni mentions that Nikki has often stayed out without warning, leaving her to look after her brother.
  • Marigold in The Illustrated Mum tries to be a good parent, but frequently leaves her children alone all night while going out, and is often not able to take care of them when depressed. Marigold is somewhat aware of her tendency to neglect Star and Dolphin, and actually expresses concern that she might be a bad mother.
  • In Clover Moon, Clover isn't given a proper education and is expected to look after her six siblings all day.
  • Several other stories have very young protagonists who are left to look after younger siblings alone while the parents work long hours or (in The Bed and Breakfast Star) just sleep all day.
  • Allison's mother in Falling Apart neglects her children because of mental illness, and often forgets to do things like ensure there's food available for dinner. She eventually has a breakdown and ends up in hospital.
  • An example not involving the main character is in This Girl where Toby and Isabel are emotionally neglectful of their two young children, whom they leave in the care of an inexperienced 16-year-old nanny all day.
• Parents as People - Generally presented negatively.
  • In Lola Rose, the mother's understandable terror at being diagnosed with breast cancer almost lands her whole family back with her abusive husband. Occasionally she also sometimes puts Jayni into the role of an adult, with Jayni describing her as trying to make her be the mum.
  • The Diamond Girls has the protagonist's family in a constant state of upheaval due to their mother frequently changing boyfriends and moving her children to new homes.
  • The Illustrated Mum portrays the title character as having bipolar disorder, which actually does get her kids into dire straits. As in 'Lola Rose,' this has resulted in forcing the oldest daughter to take on the more parent-like role in the family.
  • The parents of The Suitcase Kid use their daughter as little more than an inconvenient chess piece. Though they equally love their daughter, and are both horrified when she goes missing at night (even getting the police to form a search party).
  • Only Cam in the Tracy Beaker series is actually portrayed positively.
  • An early novel that Wilson based on this theme was Amber, in which the title character struggles to lead a normal life in spite of her mother's irresponsible hippy/"groupie" lifestyle.
  • In Queenie, Elsie's mother neglected her to go out partying, leading to Elsie being taken to an orphanage and later adopted by her grandmother. When they reunite years later, Elsie's mother hasn't changed a bit and continues to treat her daughter as an inconvenient nuisance to her own career and lifestyle.
  • Tina's mother in Falling Apart still hasn't recovered from her son's death seven years ago, and makes Tina feel very unloved because of it. It's drawn to attention several times that she never directly looks at Tina when speaking to her. When Tina unsuccessfully attempts suicide, her mother reacts harshly, to the point that it seems she wasn't even worried about her daughter dying and just angry that she'd try to kill herself.
  • In The Other Side, Allison's father expects her to conveniently fit into his new family, chastising her when she doesn't; with little sympathy for her high stress at having to unexpectedly move home after her mother was taken into hospital. He is so wrapped up in his new wife and stepchildren that he misses obvious signs Allison herself may be developing a mental health problem. When she tries to jump out of a window, genuinely believing she could fly he finally tries to get help for her - but still refuses to listen to her, instead acting as if she made an attention-seeking suicide attempt.
  • Barbara's father in Deep Blue uses his daughter to vicariously live out his own dreams of Olympic stardom, completely disregarding her wish to lead a normal teenage life.
  • Lily’s mother in Lily Alone was only 15 when she had Lily, and is implied to be very codependent on men, resulting in three more children. However, she’s very immature, still trying to be a teenager and certainly not ready to be a mother, constantly dumping her younger children on Lily with bad results and has the kids taken away, with a low chance of reunification. She does love her kids, but she’s still a bad mother in the eyes of the law.
  • In Rent a Bridesmaid Tilly's mother left her daughter in the care of her husband (implied to be due to depression) and didn't get in touch until some eighteen months later. While she loves her daughter and wants to stay in touch, she fails to fully comprehend Tilly's lack of understanding over the situation and how revelations such as being married to another man and pregnant with another child might upset her. She herself acknowledges that Tilly's father is a much better parent for Tilly than she is.
  • Daisy's parents in Sleepovers are actually attentive (they have to be, since one of their daughters is severely disabled), but it's mentioned they often have private arguments over her mother's refusal to accept Lily will never be able to walk or talk. By the time of The Best Sleepover in the World, this has improved, although Daisy's mother is still very overprotective and can't understand that there's no reason why Lily shouldn't hang out with friends or have a sleepover with appropriate support.
  • In The Dream Palace, Lolly's father abandoned his family when she was a baby, ostensibly because he couldn't be bothered to look after her. Sixteen years later Lolly's mother still blames her for this, uses her as free labour in a guest house, and otherwise largely ignores Lolly. When Lolly's stepfather is stabbed by her boyfriend Greg, her mother takes the stepfather's side and throws Lolly out.
• Persecuted Intellectuals: Jessica from Wave Me Goodbye is particularly intelligent, but also precocious. The other girls pick on her because she's a new girl and smart. She is eventually isolated after an incident involving a scandalous piece of writing, as the nuns running her school feel she may corrupt the other girls.
  • Pearl from My Sister Jodie becomes nervous when a girl at her new school notices her writing a lot in an English lesson because kids who tried hard at their work were considered swots and show-offs at her old school. Beauty and India are also treated with scorn by their female classmates when they answer questions correctly in class.
  India: What's so bad about being clever?
• Pet the Dog: At the end of The Story of Tracy Beaker, Tracy gives Justine her favorite pen despite the latter being so nasty.
  • In How to Survive Summer Camp, Stella lets Karen win a competition for Stella's expensive designer T-shirt because she feels guilty about falsely accusing Karen of destroying her valuable book.
  • Will sews up all of Violet's fairies in Midnight after she destroys them during an argument, then hangs them up in a tree outside her window.
  • In Cookie, Beauty considers not inviting Skye to her birthday party and tearing up the invitation in front of her class, but sees how desperate she is to attend and invites her, despite how mean she is.
  • Surprisingly, Mildred in Clover Moon at least attempts to understand Clover's grief when Megs dies, saying that if the baby she's currently pregnant with is a girl, they'll name it after Megs. This backfires, as Clover can't help seeing it as replacing Megs.
  • Katie in The Suitcase Kid is implied to have eventually told the adults that Andy had left the house at night and was later mentioned to have been in tears, suggesting it was out of genuine worry. She also stopped taunting Andy when she realised she was serious about going out, telling her that she was just making things up to annoy her.
• Playing a Tree - In The Left-Outs, Joan hopes to shine at her new school by winning a leading role in the school play (The Pied Piper of Hamelin); but is humiliated when she's cast as a rat with no lines. She fights back by starting her own drama club and putting on a play with other kids who had been cast as rats or background props.
• Plucky Girl
• Potty Emergency and/or Potty Failure: Occurs in several books. In Double Act, Garnet is embarrassed about having wet herself on stage during a school play when she was very young. Tracy of the Tracy Beaker series wets the bed at first. It's implied that this happened to Gemma in Best Friends, who references 'the time I thought I could make it home from McDonald's after two large cokes and a milkshake without going to the loo.' Several younger siblings throughout the books also need to pee frequently, often at great cost.
• Practically Different Generations:
  • In The Diamond Girls, Sue's daughters range in age from 10 to 16 and she then has another baby. Dixie finds out her dad's current wife has recently had another baby as well, meaning she has two siblings a decade younger than she. At the end of the book Martine gets pregnant - so the baby will only be around a year younger than his/her youngest aunt.
  • Ella in The Longest Whale Song is 10 years old when her new baby brother is born.
  • Treasure's grandmother in Secrets has six children, with the oldest at least in her late twenties and the youngest seven years old and younger than her own niece.
  • Clover Moon, Rose Rivers, and The Lottie Project all contain examples of this due to large families being common in the Victorian era.
  • In My Sister Jodie, Pearl's mother has another baby at the end of the book (after Jodie's death), who would be 10 years younger than Pearl and 14 years younger than Jodie.
  • At the end of Rent a Bridesmaid, 10-year-old Tilly's mother is about to have a new baby.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Will in "Midnight" is often mentioned to walk around his house barefoot. Also, Dixie in "The Diamond Girls"; once she's settled into her new flat a bit, and she has lost one of her socks, and she is unaware of where to find a clean pair, she decides to go without, and she also goes without trainers, because they rub her feet. Seeing as she applies this whole lifestyle choice inside and outside while living in a council estate, it does make you wonder how tough her feet are, and if not, how she doesn't give herself a massive injury... Katy's deceased mother was implied to be this too.
• Promotion to Parent - Sadie in The Mum-Minder, who must take over her ailing mother's childminding duties for a week. Jayni/Lola Rose gets this to some extent in Lola Rose when her mother goes into hospital, leaving her alone to take care of her little brother.
  • Star in The Illustrated Mum mentions having raised Dolphin for most of her life despite only being three or so years older than her.
  • Clover in Clover Moon is treated as a skivvy by her Wicked Stepmother and therefore is always having to be a second mother to her six younger siblings.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship
  • Gemma and Alice in Best Friends, although they're around 10 years old and thus would be a very mild version of the trope. The ending, where they are banned from seeing each other again but Alice's birthday package lets Gemma know that Alice still considers her a best friend almost pushes them into Star-Crossed Lovers territory.
  • Treasure and India in Secrets. In one scene, India imagines being jailed for hiding Treasure in her attic and then dreams about smuggling letters to her and then their reunion. She describes it in a way that could've been about a romantic partner, even though they've been friends for a very short time.
  • Daisy and Emily in Sleepovers. From the beginning, Daisy is very keen on being Emily's 'best friend', and the way it's set out with Alpha Bitch Chloe already being Emily's 'best friend' is very reminiscent to a Love Triangle. What's more, in the same book, Amy and Bella look set to be the Beta Couple.
• Punny Name - Billy "Biscuits" McVitie, since McVitie is one of the biggest biscuit-making companies in Britain.
• Pushover Parents: Prue and Grace's mother in Love Lessons is used to being the nice one while her dominating husband bullies her and her daughters. When he has a stroke, she shows an utter lack of control over them, Prue in particular and laments they would never behave so wilfully with their father around.
• Raised as the Opposite Gender - In The Diamond Girls, the main character's mother tries to raise her new baby girl as a boy; having been convinced while she was pregnant that she would finally have a son this time (she already has four daughters.) She does get found out and agree to stop the charade.
• Raised by Grandparents:
  • May in "The Power of the Shade" is an orphan raised by her grandparents and a great-aunt who lives with them.
  • In Queenie, Elsie was raised by her grandmother because her own mother had abandoned Elsie. Secrets also has Treasure's grandmother take her in after Treasure is beaten by her stepfather.
  • The protagonist of The Cat Mummy has a living father but is looked after by her parents during the day while he is at work.
• Replacement Goldfish:
  • In Midnight, the heroine's brother was adopted because he looked exactly like their parents' first baby, who died
  • In The Illustrated Mum, Marigold tried to replace her first love Micky with Dolphin's father Michael, who she called "Micky" at the time. It didn't work out.
  • In Glubbslyme, the eponymous toad attaches himself to Rebecca because she happens to have the same name as his former mistress, though he's disappointed she's not a witch and just a ten-year-old girl. He does grow to like her for herself, though.
  • In Falling Apart, Tina is aware that her relationship with Simon is going nowhere, but is desperate to hang onto him because he fills the emotional void she feels after her brother died.
  • In Hetty Feather, Hetty loses hope after finding out that Jem (who promised to marry her when she grew up) has made the same promise to their younger foster sister Eliza.
  • May in The Power of the Shade is treated as a replacement for her dead mother. She's named after her mother ("May" is an anagram of her mother's name, Amy); has her mother's old bedroom, furniture, books, and other belongings; and is pushed to become an artist because that was Amy's ambition in life. Her grandparents and great-aunt express approval by commenting on May's similarities to Amy, and disapproval by encouraging her to be more like Amy.
• Retcon - Billy "Biscuits" gets a change of surname between Buried Alive/Cliffhanger (his first appearances) and Best Friends, where he reappears as a main character in a book unrelated to the previous two.
• Sadist Teacher - Miss Beckworth in The Lottie Project (though by the end it's obvious she's more of a Stern Teacher)
  • Also Miss Hill from The Illustrated Mum, who seems to delight in making Dolphin's day that much worse, despite the fact there would be a lot of evidence that Dol had a rough home life and at one point she continues to lecture Dol about the fact she hasn't even washed her face even as Dol is crying. However, she then appears to have some remorse, and later in the story, she definitely pulls a Heel–Face Turn after the school being made aware of what Dolphin has been through.
  • In The Butterfly Club, Tina and her sisters initially view Miss Lovejoy as this, although it is made clearer that she is actually closer to a Stern Teacher.
  • Miss Morley in Hetty Feather makes fun of Hetty for being one of the most intelligent students, and hits Polly with a ruler for trying to help by pointing out her mistakes.
  • Mrs Godfrey in Love Lessons treats Prue rudely for no reason when she asks for an English exercise book on her first day. Then she mocks Prue in front of the whole class for working hard on an essay about a poem. This is especially upsetting, as Prue is actually good at English and struggled in most other subjects with the exception of Art.
  • Miss Mountbank in Opal Plumstead finds any excuse to punish Opal and say horrible things to her. When Opal mentions her father is close to getting a book published, she accuses her of lying despite all evidence to the contrary. Her actions seem to be because Opal is a scholarship student who can't help coming top in everything.
  • Mr Bentley from Wave Me Goodbye is quite mean, and even tries to take Shirley's books away when it's clear how much she cares about them.
    • But he's nothing compared to Mr Mitford, who gives a child the strap for one remark, terrifying the new students. Then he won't give Mary a pencil when hers breaks (although he gave one to another girl), then makes fun of Kevin's height and lack of knowledge. Luckily, Shirley's good vocabulary keeps him from lashing out at her.
• Sand In My Eyes: Whenever Tracy Beaker cries, she insists that it is a "hay fever attack".
• Second Love - Russell for Ellie in the Girls series. In Opal Plumstead, Opal considers beginning a relationship with her second love Sam after her first, Morgan, is killed during WWI.
• Self-Insert Fic:
  • The heroine of The Lottie Project writes her school history project as the fictional diary of a Victorian servant, who is a thinly veiled copy of herself.
  • In Clean Break, the protagonist meets a famous children's author named Jenna Williams, clearly intended to represent Wilson.
  • A subplot in Nobody's Perfect involves Sandra, who's looking for her biological father, writing a story about a girl named Rosamond going through the same experience. Lampshaded when she manages to get the story published - and they change Rosamond's name to Sandra.
• Settle for Sibling:
  • In the Hetty Feather books, after Jem makes Hetty a Childhood Marriage Promise, she's upset to later discover that he's now promised to marry their foster sister Eliza instead (although he ends up marrying a completely different woman.(
  • The ending of Kiss suggests that Sylvie will begin a relationship with Carl's brother Jake.
• Shared Universe - Implied across several books:
  • Garnet from Double Act is mentioned in My Sister Jodie. She and Ruby also reappear as adults in The Butterfly Club.
    • In the former, this may not be the same Garnet, since Pearl mentions reading a book that has the plot of Double Act.
  • In Midnight, Jasmine talks about how she used to go to Marnock Heights, the boarding school the twins in Double Act try to get into.
  • Tanya and Pat from Bad Girls reappear in Dustbin Baby where Pat turns out to have been April's first foster carer.
  • The final illustration of Candyfloss shows many of Jacqueline Wilson's characters visiting the fair, including Gemma, Alice and Biscuits from Best Friends and Floss's dad reads her a book with the same plot as Glubbslyme as a bedtime story. Interestingly, in the illustration for Chapter 14 of the same novel, three books can be seen that resemble the real-life book covers for The Diamond Girls, Secrets and Best Friends. Whether this is a reference to Jenna Williams in Clean Break, a fictional version of Jacqueline Wilson, is uncertain.
  • Jenna Williams shows up briefly in The Butterfly Club, as she comes to the fair at Tina's school. She's not mentioned by name, but the illustration shows it's her.
    • As a note, while most people remember Jenna Williams as a character from Clean Break, her first appearance in The Real Rebecca, a short story written for a fundraising compilation of short stories for children (War Child) where a boy falls for a girl called Rebecca at a book-signing and then tries to get back in touch with her by writing to the author, who posts his letter on her website. He doesn't find her, but another girl with the same name responds to the letter, who he eventually becomes close with.
  • Biscuits from Buried Alive and Cliffhanger is a character in Best Friends, where he's Gemma's friend back home after returning from holidays with Tim.
  • Elaine the Pain from The Story of Tracy Beaker is mentioned in Dustbin Baby.
  • Additionally in Best Friends, Gemma and Alice's favourite television programme is The Story of Tracy Beaker the show that exists in real life, rather than the book, since Best Friends exists in the same world as Buried Alive! which exists in the same world as Girls In Love which exists in the same world as Bad Girls which exists in the same world as Dustin Baby which exists in the same world as The Story of Tracy Beaker, apparently Tracy really did hit it big in-universe.
    • Several books drop in references to Tracy as a cultural icon, with Beauty from Cookie mentioning having a Tracy Beaker dressing gown and Sylvie from Kiss trying to style her hair but only succeeding in getting a style she compares to Tracy's. My Mum Tracy Beaker states that Tracy was on TV in universe, however this was a documentary on children in care.
  • Rent-A-Bridesmaid features Marty and Melissa from The Worst Thing About My Sister, with a bridesmaids' dress made by their mother. There's also a mention of La Terrazza, an Italian restaurant first mentioned by India in Secrets.
  • Clover Moon takes place in late Victorian times, just like Hetty Feather, and many of the characters from the first book are mentioned and/or appear, including Hetty herself. The series is even called "World of Hetty Feather."
  • The castle in Girls in Love is the same castle as in Buried Alive!.
  • A large number of the books mention characters going to the Flowerfields Shopping Centre, although it's not clear whether it is the same one each time.
  • Hetty Feather shows up in Dancing The Charleston as an adult, as a model of Queen Elizabeth (she even mentions that Diamond is taking over her shift when she finishes).
  • The Runaway Girls ends with the girls finding Tanglefield's Travelling Circus from the Hetty Feather'' books, although this takes place around thirty years before Hetty discovered it. Mr Tanglefield is still a boy and his father runs it, and Madame Adeline calls herself "Miss Adeline" as she's still too young to be "Madame" (she is described as a girl rather than a woman).
  • One of Cam's fosters in My Mum Tracy Beaker is implied to be Lily from Lily Alone.
• Shipper on Deck: Dixie ships her mum with Bruce, a friend of her dad's that she bonds with, though it's mainly because she wants a father figure in her life and not because she understands how adult relationships works.
  • A similar example is when Beauty in Cookie ships her mum with Mike, a new friend they met after moving to the seaside; seemingly because she thinks her mum deserves a happy relationship after leaving Beauty's abusive father (although Beauty is understanding when her mum gently explains that she's told Mike she just wants to be friends.)
  • Deconstructed in Love Lessons, as Grace ships Prue with Toby because he's the most popular boy in school, and their mother does too eventually, much to Prue's annoyance as she can't stand Toby and all his attention does is attract more bullying from Rita.
  • Jess in We Are the Beaker Girls is desperate to find Tracy a new boyfriend so that there is no chance of her dating Sean. Although she prefers Tracy being single, by the end of the book, she is ready become this for Tracy and Peter Ingham.
• Shout-Out: The Runaway Girls have characters called Lucy and Kitty, referencing the nursery rhyme. Lucy's father even calls her "Lucy Locket", and Lucy brings up the rhyme several times. However, Kitty doesn't recognize the rhyme when Lucy recites it to her.
• Shrinking Violet - Violet in Midnight (aptly enough), Sylvie in Kiss, Beauty in Cookie, Lolly in The Dream Palace, Pearl in My Sister Jodie, Garnet in Double Act, Bliss in Lily Alone and several others.
  • Lizzie in Lizzie Zipmouth isn't actually shy, she just refuses to speak due to being angry at her mother's remarriage. She grows out of it, eventually.
• Sibling Yin-Yang - Violet and Will (Midnight), Pearl and Jodie (My Sister Jodie), Dolphin and Star (The Illustrated Mum), Garnet and Ruby (Double Act), Marty and Melissa in The Worst Thing About My Sister. All the sisters in The Diamond Girls are examples, but particularly Dixie and Rochelle.
• Signature Style - Recurring themes in Wilson's books include broken homes, neglectful mothers and/or absent or demanding fathers, the heroine wanting to be a writer or artist, relationships/attraction between older men and much younger women, part of the story being set in a museum or art gallery, and the main character making friends with a social outcast.
  • Characters often have a tendency to repeat words for emphasis - as in “school is awful awful awful”.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: May, the protagonist of The Power of the Shade, has red hair and green eyes. When she comes to believe that her friend Selina has initiated her as a witch, she associates her hair and eye colour with her apparent new powers.
• Skyward Scream: In "The Dare Game", during an argument with Football, he tells Tracy that his dad doesn't want him and nobody wants her either, leading Tracy to scream "My mum wants me!!" so loudly she hears it echoing down the street and an alarm goes off somewhere.
• Someone to Remember Him By: In The Power of the Shade, May's mother died shortly after May was born; her grandparents treat May as this trope and encourage her to be more like her mother.
• Spell My Name With An S - In Lola Rose, Jayni explains that the unusual spelling of her name is because it was chosen as a portmanteau of her parents' names (Jay and Nikki.)
• Spirited Young Lady - Rose Rivers. She knows how to behave as an upper-class young lady, but often chooses not to be. Often contrasted with other girls in her social position, but feels more of a kinship with Clover, a servant girl from a poor family, and Hetty, a penniless foundling child.
• Squick: Love Lessons tells the story of a school teacher's affair with a 14-year-old student. It's told entirely from her perspective and due to her youth and naivety, she doesn't see anything wrong with it, but older readers will hopefully feel a bit ill about the teacher going with it, though he breaks it off before it goes too far.
• Stacy's Mom - Mr "Rax" Raxberry in Love Lessons, Coral's employer in This Girl, Paris Walker in Rose Rivers.
• Start My Own - In The Left-Outs, a group of kids who didn't get speaking parts in the school play decide to put on their own production.
• Stepford Smiler: Lola Rose would act like this in hope of not setting her father off. The same goes for Beauty in Cookie.
• Straw Feminist: Isobel in This Girl fits this trope, and is particularly angry about the plight of Victorian women forced to work as domestic servants (she is a college lecturer in history.) This doesn't stop her from hypocritically exploiting Coral, an impoverished young girl, as a housekeeper.
• Street Urchin: Kitty from The Runaway Girls. Lucy also counts herself as one once she is turned away at her home (because her father didn't recognize her after she had her clothes stolen), but it's obvious she didn't grow up on the streets by her manners and accent.
• Stress Vomit: Happens to several characters in several books. Jade from Vicky Angel throws up whilst waiting for her dying friend in hospital, and Em from Clean Break is made physically sick by the revelation that her father is having an affair.
  • Surprisingly, this happens to Marty for the opposite reason. After Melissa's fall, she makes up a lie about how it happened instead of telling them that Marty kicked the ladder while she was on it. Marty had been terrified that Melissa would tell on her because she'd always done so before, but she throws up because she is "sick with relief".
  • It happens with Garnet from Double Act when she gets really nervous about going to the audition.
• Surprise Incest: No attention is called to it, but during ''Dancing The Charleston, Mona appears to have a one sided crush on Roland. He doesn't do anything to suggest he realizes, but since he knows that they're cousins but Mona doesn't, that's not surprising. Only a borderline case as they're not closely related, but it's still a shock when Mona discovers it.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • In Best Friends, when Gemma and Alice try to run away when they find out Alice is moving to Scotland, it takes their parents about five minutes to figure out they've gone to the train station and both of them are taken home and forbidden to go out.
  • In Lily Alone, Social Services are not happy about Lily’s mother abandoning her and her siblings for a vacation in Spain with her boyfriend, even though she (weakly) tried to arrange care for them. Lily's mother is charged with neglect and the kids are put in foster care. The boyfriend also dumped her when he learned what happened.
  • In The Illustrated Mum Dolphin searches for her father when Marigold, her mother, is taken into hospital with bipolar disorder. Dolphin is successful, and Michael, her father, is genuinely pleased to meet her. At the same time, however, Michael points out that being blood relatives does not override the fact that Dolphin is a complete stranger to him, and hence they must get to know each other properly before he can adopt her.
  • Lolly spends most of The Dream Palace on the run with Greg, who's wanted by police because he stabbed and severely wounded her stepfather. Finally, she comes to realize that she can't live like this forever, and hands him over to the police so that she can go home and resume a normal life.
• Survivor Guilt:
  • In Vicky Angel, Jade suffers heavily from this after Vicky's death, believing that it's somehow her fault Vicky stepped out into the road and was killed. Later in the book, she sees a bereavement counsellor who confesses she blames herself for her very young daughter's death from a terminal illness, even though logically she knows it couldn't have been her fault.
  • Part of the reason for Tina's ultimately unsuccessful suicide attempt in Falling Apart. Her brother was killed falling out of a tree, and Tina blames herself since she encouraged him to climb it. Tina's sister also suggests this is the reason for their mother's continuing depression.
• Sympathetic P.O.V. - In ''Love Lessons', some readers might not be rooting for Prudence. Her headmistress even gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech near the end.
  • Em and her half-siblings adore Frankie (Em's stepfather) but it can't be denied that he cheated on their mother for six months, took them out of school to an unknown location without telling anyone and all but disappears from their lives for the rest of the year. Justified as they are children and don't fully comprehend the situation.
• Teacher/Student Romance - Prue and Mr Raxberry in Love Lessons. Though he eventually decides he can't continue the relationship, he does kiss the underaged Prudence a few times and even tells her he loves her.
  • In The Power of the Shade, May develops a semi-romantic relationship with her teacher, for whom she writes romanticised fairytales. At the end of the novel, she seems to get over it after experiencing a psychotic break during which she hallucinates that she burned his house down.
  • In the Girls series, Ellie's father is an art teacher who met both his wives when they were students - although they were in college and would have been at least 18. Subverted in Girls Out Late when Magda develops a crush on her teacher, who isn't interested in her and is happy with a girlfriend his own age.
• Teen Pregnancy - 16-year-old Martine gets pregnant in The Diamond Girls. In Secrets, Treasure's aunt Loretta is a fifteen-year-old mother, and it is hinted that Treasure's mother was a teenager when she had Treasure. April in Dustbin Baby believes that her mother was a young teenager who could not take care of a baby and was thus driven to abandon April. It is also noted that Jo from "The Lottie Project" became pregnant with Charlie while she was still in school.
  • A plot point in Amber is that the title character thinks she's pregnant although she's not.
  • Tina's mother accuses Tina of being pregnant in Falling Apart without even asking her first. Tina reacts defensively.
    • Also in Falling Apart, Louise is 18 years old and already married with a baby. This was more common at the time of the book's release, but Simon is shocked when Tina tells him her sister is a teenage mother. This might be one of the reasons Tina's mother jumps to conclusions about why she's acting strangely, even though Tina is only fifteen.
  • Tracy Beaker's mother had her at 16, with the latter stating in the film that she "was hardly a child herself when she had [Tracy]". Tracy says that in her children's home, baby Wayne is sometimes visited by his mother who is even younger than Adele, a sixteen-year-old also living at the home.
  • In Girls Under Pressure, Anna suspects that Ellie's Weight Woe is due to this, but Ellie reacts more maturely than Tina.
  • in Lily Alone, Lily’s mother was 15 when she had her.
  • In The Lottie Project, Charlie mentions her mother Jo is a lot younger than the other mums and her parents initially wanted her to give Charlie up for adoption, but Jo refused to do so and seems to still rather resent her parents for this suggestion.
  • Baby Love focuses around this and the typical reaction of the 1960s. All of the girls at the house Laura is sent to are teenage mothers, all of whom are expected to give up their baby to be adopted.
• Tempting Fate: In "Vicky Angel", Vicky's last words are "Who wants to grow up?" She is hit by a car seconds later and doesn't get the chance to grow up.
• The Film of the Book - Dustbin Baby, Double Act, Best Friends, The Illustrated Mum and Katy became made-for-TV movies. Four Children and It also has a movie in the works and Wilson is reportedly in talks for film adaptations of Lola Rose and/or My Sister Jodie.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry - Subverted in Opal Plumstead- while Cassie and Opal have a relatively good relationship, they do fall into the same categories: Cassie is the pretty one, and Opal is the smart one.
  • Played straighter in The Diamond Girls, especially between Jude/Rochelle/Dixie. Martine tends to consider herself above it, as she's the oldest.
• Theme Naming - Love Lessons, where Prudence and Grace are so named because their father liked Victorian-style "virtue" names.
  Prue: I'm Prudence Charity and my sister is Grace Patience!
  • In Sleepovers, the main character and her friends form an "Alphabet Club" because their names begin with the first five letters of the alphabet: Amy, Bella, Chloe, Daisy, and Emily. Daisy's sister is named Lily, and all the children in Amy's family have names beginning with A.
  • In Double Act, not only do Ruby and Garnet get Theme Twin Naming, but their mother was also called Opal. Their new stepmother is named Rose, so their father opens a store called The Red Bookshop because his girlfriend and daughters are all named after something red. Ruby and Garnet are very annoyed to be lumped together with Rose and Ruby points out roses aren't always red.
  • In the Girls series, Nadine and her bratty little sister Natasha both have "N" names.
  • The protagonist of The Power of the Shade was named May because it's an anagram of Amy, the name of her late mother.
  • In Project Fairy, Mab and her brother Robin are both named after mythological fairies (Queen Mab and Robin Goodfellow.) In a similar example as Sleepovers, Mab's former friend Billie formed the "ABC Club" with Anita and Cathy, and they won't let Mab join because her name doesn't start with D.
  • Treasure's grandmother in Secrets named all her children after popular country and western singers.
  • In The Bed and Breakfast Star, Naomi and her brothers all have names beginning with N (Naomi, Nicky, Neil, and Nathan.)
  • In The Diamond Girls, Ellen-Jane's parents have three sons named Matthew, Mark, and Luke after Jesus' apostles; and want another son whom they can name John.
• Theme Twin Naming - Ruby and Garnet are both named after red gems.
• There Are No Therapists: Often the case. Although eventually averted in Vicky Angel when Jade is finally given some grief counselling and it is a big help to her.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl:
  • In Katy, Katy is much taller than her friend/potential love interest Ryan. Downplayed by the end of the book, when it's mentioned their height difference is less obvious with her in her wheelchair.
  • In Dustin Baby, April was once fostered by "Big Mo" who was considerably larger than her husband "Little Pete."
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Gemma and Alice in Best Friends, Treasure and India in Secrets, Ruby and Garnet in Double Act, Lolly and Lynne in The Dream Palace, Marty and Melissa in The Worst Thing About My Sister, Katy and Cecy in Katy, Matty and Tilly in "Rent-A-Bridesmaid", Kitty and Lucy in The Runaway Girls.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth:
  • Saul and Sarah in Hetty Feather, who die during a flu epidemic at the Foundling Hospital.
• Megs from Clover Moon who dies of scarlet fever after wearing a shawl laced with the infection.
  • Averted with Vicky in Vicky Angel and Jodie in My Sister Jodie who were somewhat less than angelic when they were alive.
• Traumatic Haircut - Example of sorts in How to Survive Summer Camp, where Stella mentions that she used to have very long hair but got it chopped down to bristle when the punky-looking hairdresser misunderstood her instructions to cut only a small amount.
  • In Hetty Feather, every child who arrives at the Foundling Hospital has this happen to avoid head lice.
• Trickster Twins - Ruby and Garnet in Double Act occasionally act this way. The first time they meet Rose, she gets their names wrong, but they tell her she's right and their dad has to set her straight. Then they switch seats and Rose gets them mixed up again.
• Troubled Teen: Jordan from We Are The Beaker Girls is this, having been in and out of foster care, being taken back whenever she acts out. When Jess first meets her, she's a homeless runaway disguised as a boy and only manages to get her act together when Cam agrees to foster her while Tracy is working on becoming approved so she can foster Jordan later on.
• The Un-Favourite: Sunset in Little Darlings, especially in comparison to her sister Sweetie. In one scene when her mother is taking her little brother to the zoo and her father is taking her sister shopping, they both encourage Sunset to go with the other parent, to which she correctly guesses that neither of them want her along.
  • Andy in The Suitcase Kid feels this way, especially when she finds out her dad's new wife is pregnant with her half-sister. She even has a nightmare about her half-sister taking her place. Graham also suffers from this from his father, who clearly favours Katie.
  • Grace in Love Lessons thinks that her dad doesn't even like her. He constantly calls her stupid and fat, and while he is almost as bad to Prue, he generally favours her.
  • Ellen Jane in Diamond. Matthew, Mark, and Luke cause her mother to continue having babies in hope of having a John. Mary-Martha, as the older daughter, is the most helpful child. Ellen-Jane, however, is almost rejected because she's not the boy her mother wanted, and she doesn't necessarily want a second daughter.
    • Her father favours her until her mother's death, when he refuses to address her and blames her for her mother's death (even though it was more his fault than hers).
  • Martha's mother in The Longest Whale Song from what we see treats her worse than her younger half-sister.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Jeannie Rivers' behaviour after Nurse Budd is dismissed for turning Beth into an opium addict is in line with this. She complains that she'll never be able to find another nurse who could handle Beth and actually acts as if Rose's questioning was the cause of all the problems (had Rose not questioned things, Beth might not have survived). When her husband explains that Clover would mind Beth from then on, Jeannie simply replies that they should dismiss Clover despite her success as a nurserymaid. Jeannie is, in short, dismissing the evidence in order to preserve her perception - therefore, Rose did wrong, and Clover should never have been hired, which makes her seem very ungrateful for her daughter's life being saved.
• The Unreveal:
  • It is never revealed in Little Darlings whether or not Destiny is the biological daughter of Danny Kilman. Evidence shows to support and not support this theory. To support it, Destiny is a fantastic singer, and bears resemblance to Danny and his daughter Sunset, but to not support it, her mother is clearly more than a little unhinged and overly obsessed with Danny, which makes it possible to show she might be making this up herself.
  • "The Power of the Shade" does not reveal whether Aunt Win is really Amy's biological mother and May's grandmother. To support it, Win was far more involved in Amy's (and later May's) upbringing than you would expect from an aunt. Their neighbour tells May that everyone suspects Win was really Amy's mother; and when May questions why Win was allowed at Amy's hospital bedside despite not being a close relative, Win is about to tell her something but is interrupted. To not support it, the neighbour is deliberately causing trouble and could just be bringing up nasty gossip. May doesn't believe her grandfather would betray his wife, and while she admits she could be wrong about that, she also doesn't think her grandmother would have been forgiving enough to let Win keep living with them.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend - Sylvie to Carl in Kiss, although they do seem to be Platonic Life-Partners by the ending.
  • Similar situation with Sam to Frankie in Love Frankie. Frankie sees their relationship more as Platonic Life-Partners, due to her turning out to be a lesbian. They both remark that their future romantic partners will probably be annoyed that they will always put each other first ahead of anyone else.
• Uptown Girl: Many of Wilson's earlier books, such as This Girl, Deep Blue and Falling Apart deal with cross-class romances, usually culminating in a Bittersweet Ending or Downer Ending.
• Very Special Episode: Almost all of Wilson's books deal with modern children's issues, such as mental health problems, divorce, and dysfunctional family dynamics.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child:
  • The relationship between the title character of The Illustrated Mum and her two children can be considered a deconstruction of this pairing. Marigold genuinely cares for both of her daughters, but is highly susceptible to exaggerated mood swings and extreme behaviors, which worry Dolphin, frustrate Star, and present severe negative consequences for the entire family. Dolphin is bullied at her school and has only one friend, because all of her classmates know about Marigold's unusual ways. Micky, Star's father, is implied to find Marigold's wackiness unbearable. Towards the end of the story, Dolphin learns that Marigold suffers from bipolar disorder, and hence has to be temporarily hospitalized.
  • Tracy and Jess have this dynamic in My Mum Tracy Beaker.
  • In Amber, Amber's mother Jay is an irresponsible ex-hippy and rock groupie who often acts more like a teenager than her own daughter; while Amber struggles to hold the family together and continue her education.
  • Luna's dad from The Girl Who Wasn't There tries to move his family into an ancient tower. It becomes increasingly clear that it's likely to fall in, but takes him months to face up to the reality despite his friends, family and a surveyor pointing this out, while Luna has been doubtful about moving there from the start.
• Weight Woe - Ellie in the Girls series, Em in Clean Break, Barbara in Deep Blue, Allison in The Other Side and Joan in "The Left-Outs" all struggle with their weight. The heroine usually ends up losing some weight by the end of the book.
  • Em doesn't worry about her weight early on however - it's her gran who keeps insisting on her dieting. Eventually, she does lose weight and partially loses interest in treat foods.
  • India's mum tries to invoke this with India in Secrets, but she doesn't want to be bothered with eating sensibly and doesn't even try to stick to her diet. India herself comments her mother might be anorexic because she never finishes anything she eats and exercises to an obsessive extent.
• Where There's a Will, There's a Sticky Note - Tina in Falling Apart does this when she tries, but ultimately fails, to commit suicide.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Kitty from The Runaway Girls falls in love with a boy's acrobatic outfit on Monmouth Street and doesn't care that she's not a boy, wearing it anyway.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: In Best Friends, Gemma comments her mother is very exasperated by her Tomboy daughter, as she already has two sons and really wanted a girly girl she could dress up, but Gemma is even more boyish than her brothers and Gemma is convinced her mother would prefer to have Alice as a daughter.
  • Alexander from The Dare Game is convinced his father doesn't like him because he's a bookish nerd instead of a strapping young athlete like Football.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You? - Vicky Angel and Cookie.
  • Jay also uses this tactic on Nikki in Lola Rose and we get to see it in action seconds after he promises to care for Nikki after her surgery only to fly into a rage and go to punch her when he finds out she had a relationship with another man in his absence.
• Wicked Stepmother - In Emerald Star, Hetty's stepmother is extremely vicious towards her and refuses to believe Hetty is who she says she is at all. She doesn't even thank her for saving her half-brother from drowning.
  • In Clean Break, Em's dad gets a new girlfriend who has no interest in his children and is as unpleasant to them as possible in the hope that they'll stop visiting.
  • Mildred in Clover Moon is this to Clover and to a lesser extent, Megs.
  • Holly in The Worry Website wishes her dad's girlfriend was wicked so she could hate her for taking her mum's place. When she does turn on her, Holly changes her mind and they make up by the end of the chapter.
  • Gender inverted with Treasure's stepfather in Secrets. Terry actually hits Treasure with his belt, leaving a scar on her forehead and resulting in Treasure's grandmother finally taking Treasure out of his house, refusing to accept her mother's excuses.
  • Averted with Anna from the Girls series.
  • Ruby and Garnet (Ruby in particular) view Rose this way after their father remarries and make it clear they don't appreciate her replacing their mother, though Rose does try to bond with them.
• Wild Teen Party: A few in some of her books 'for older readers', most notably those featured in the Girls series.
• With Friends Like These... - Many Jacqueline Wilson protagonists have to deal with friends who are cruel and disloyal. It is believable that most of these friendships survive, but they do demand a lot of resilience from the protagonists themselves, all of whom are unwilling to risk losing their friendships with the various problems they have.
  • Defied in Candyfloss; Floss falls out with the unpleasant Rhiannon and starts being best friends with Susan, a much nicer girl.
  • An example not involving the main character occurs in How to Survive Summer Camp, where Louise clearly could not care less about Karen but Karen continues to idolise and fawn after her.
  • Vicky was extremely controlling towards Jade which actually makes Jade's heartbreak at Vicky's death even more tragic.
  • Tyrone in My Mum Tracy Beaker stops being friends with Jess after Tracy dumps Sean due to his idolization of Sean. He still appears to be friendly with Jess at the start of We Are The Beaker Girls, but mostly disappears from the story after that.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit - An example of sorts in Deep Blue. Barbara has a real accident at the pool, but greatly exaggerates her injuries as an excuse to quit diving and then get her father off her back.
• Younger Than They Look - Making Hate, an early crime novel by Wilson, opens with the protagonist asking a girl on a date - believing that she is a young woman in her 20s. When she arrives for the date, he soon realises she's a teenager, but still thinks she's around 18 (or almost) and just about an adult. It's not until later, when he is falsely suspected of raping her, that he discovers she is only fourteen years old.
  • The Primrose Railway Children: Becks (fourteen years old) passes herself off to Jake (who is eighteen) as sixteen years old. Jake fortunately is very easygoing and gentlemanly and once he becomes aware of Becks' real age, seems to take care not to take things too far.
• You're Not My Father - The plot of Wilson's first children's novel, Nobody's Perfect, in which a girl who hates her stepfather tries to track down her biological dad. He turns out to be equally disappointing.
  • Dolphin does this a little in The Illustrated Mum with Star's father, Micky, when Marigold encourages Dolphin to accept him as her own dad. Probably justified on the grounds that Micky spent the whole time fussing over Star and ignoring Dolphin and Marigold.
  • Ruby and Garnet in Double Act love to remind Rose that she is not their mother, although both warm to her by the end of the book.
  • Prudence says this to her father in the beginning of Love Lessons, but is horrified seconds later when he has a stroke.
  • In Katy, the protagonist repeatedly pulls this line on her stepmother Izzie. She learns to accept Izzie later on, when she realizes that the fact of her father having re-married after Katy's mother died does not mean he loved his first wife less.
  • Clover in Clover Moon keeps repeating this to Mildred, her stepmother, and adds this whenever someone refers to Mildred as her mother. In a later scene, Mildred doesn't even notice when Clover walks past her on the street and doesn't even notice she's there. Clover notes that in the text, saying that means she really doesn't see Clover as a daughter, because if she had, she would have recognized her.
  • Ella in The Longest Whale Song tends to react angrily when anyone refers to Jack as her dad, since she has her own dad, even though he hardly ever makes the effort to see her. However, she does come to appreciate him as the book progresses.
  • Lucy from The Runaway Girls refuses to see her stepmother as a parent. She even accuses her father of having forgotten her real mother. It doesn't help that when she comes to the door in nothing but a cheap dress, her stepmother doesn't even recognize her.
• Zany Scheme - Particularly books aimed at younger children.

---