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Opal Plumstead

by Jacqueline Wilson, illustrated by Nick Sharratt

Interest age: 9+
Reading age: 8+

Published by Doubleday Children's Books, 2015

  • Historical

About this book

To coincide with its centenary, Jacqueline Wilson has written a weighty 520-page story set in the run-up to World War I. Fourteen-year-old Opal's family falls on hard times when her accountant father foolishly forges a cheque to support his family. When he is arrested, they are reduced to penury, and feisty Opal, a clever scholarship girl at school, has instead to find work in a local factory. Here she encounters both bullying and friendship, encouragement in her art work, an introduction to women's suffrage, and ultimately love. The final chapter shows how World War I both destroys and encourages different aspects of her life, as it did for many girls.

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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