Nine-plus

Jacqueline Wilson doesn’t do many school visits, but everything her fans want to know is here.

They will lap up her story of her life from birth to 11-plus (passed on second attempt), follow the links to their favourite books and enjoy Nick Sharratt’s embellish-ments to the family album.

There is another layer of discovery in the account of a future writer’s rich imaginative life.

Growing up just before widespread children’s TV, Jacky developed obsessions that would prove fruitful: Mandy Miller, the child actress, a cast of 1,000 paper dolls clipped from fashion catalogues, and the books of Noel Streatfeild and E Nesbit.

But she noticed the “smug, safe, middle-class” world of 1950s children’s books, loved Eve Garnett’s The Family from One End Street and wrote her own version, called Meet the Maggots, aged nine