book cover

Wave Me Goodbye

by Jacqueline Wilson, illustrated by Nick Sharratt

Interest age: 9 to 12
Reading age: 10 to 12

Published by Doubleday Children’s, 2017

  • Historical

About this book

One day, Shirley’s mum tells her she’s going on a little holiday. London in 1939 isn’t safe, so Shirley finds herself packed up and on a train with hundreds of other children, charging out of London and ending in Meadow Ridge, a village very far away from home.

At the very grand Red House with the odd and reclusive Mrs Waverley, Shirley starts to adjust to a very different life in the country, where rabbits are shot for pies and two rough, silly boys from the East End annoy and charm her in equal measure. Yet when Mum turns up to rescue her, Shirley realises that perhaps Red House isn’t so bad...

Shirley’s emotional and physical hardships are sensitively depicted in this sometimes sad, sometimes happy, story, and Wilson returns to the theme of resilience of children in difficult circumstances. Recent and older fans of master storyteller Jacqueline Wilson will delight in this new tale of friendship and bravery.

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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