book cover

The Story of Tracy Beaker

by Jacqueline Wilson, illustrated by Nick Sharratt

Interest age: 8+
Reading age: 8+

Published by Random House, 2006

  • Classics
  • Diaries and journals

About this book

Tracy Beaker is a funny, imaginative and articulate ten-year-old girl, but she can also be angry, impulsive and a bit violent too. Tracy lives in a children's home but constantly hopes that her absent, glamorous mum will come and take her away.

One day Cam visits the home, to write a piece on the children. Tracy, being something of a writer herself, resolves to help out. The two form a bond and Tracy begins to wonder if Cam might represent a way out of the home for good.

Tracy's story is told as a series of diary entries, liberally illustrated with doodles and drawings from the pen of Nick Sharratt. She is an endearing narrator and her bouts of temper serve only to make her seem more believable. Both funny and touching by turns, it is easy to see why Tracy's story has become a modern-day classic.

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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