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Lily Alone

by Jacqueline Wilson, illustrated by Nick Sharratt

Interest age: 10+
Reading age: 10+

Published by Doubleday Children's Books, 2011

  • Coming-of-age

About this book

Lily's self-centred young mother jets off to a holiday in Spain with her new boyfriend. Lily and her three younger siblings are carelessly left behind.

Responsible Lily takes on the task of feeding and amusing the family while trying to keep their plight a secret from her school, neighbours and social services.

Desperate for a solution, Lily decides to take the children camping in the park for a few days. However, an accident requiring a visit to the hospital unravels all Lily's plans and leads to police intervention and foster care.

With overtones of an abusive step parent and an ending that suggests an uncertain future for our heroine and her family, this is an unsettling and thought-provoking story.

About the author

Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath in 1945, and spent her childhood in Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey, where she still lives today. She started her writing career as a teenage journalist with D.C. Thompson, writing for the teenage magazine Jackie which was named after her. Today her popular books for children have sold millions of copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages.

Jacqueline's books include The Story of Tracy Beaker, which has become a hugely successful BBC TV series; Girls in Love, which together with its two sequels was filmed for ITV television; and Double Act, which she adapted for Channel 4 and which won the Royal TV Society's Best Children's Fiction Award. As the fourth Children's Laureate (2005-2007) she promoted the importance of sharing books, and reading aloud together.

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