Book Info

Format

Hardback
384 pages

Author

Jacqueline Wilson
More books by Jacqueline Wilson

Author's Website

www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk/jacquelinewi

Publisher

Doubleday & Co Inc. an imprint of Random House Children's Books

Suitable for Ages

Featured Books for 9+ readers

Publication date

4th March 2010

ISBN

9780385614436

Little Darlings

Jacqueline Wilson

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Julia Eccleshare's comment:

Bestselling Jacqueline Wilson tells a fairy tale story of the unlikely intertwining of two very different families against a strong and realistic background. Destiny is growing up poor with her mum who does three jobs and struggles to pay the mortgage; Sunset lives in pampered luxury with her parents whose desire for celebrity status overshadows real family happiness. But the two girls are linked by their celebrity Dad. How can they get together and, when they do, how can they persuade all their parents that they really are great friends and sisters?

Who is Julia Eccleshare ?

Synopsis

Sunset lives a life of luxury with her beautiful ex-model mum, her world-famous ex-rocker dad and two little celeb siblings. But life on the red carpet is no compensation for rowing parents, constant nagging, intensive media scrutiny and no real friends. Destiny, on the other hand, is an only child living on a rundown estate with a sickly but devoted mum who constantly tells her that she's really the daughter of a famous former rock star...When the two girls meet in unlikely circumstances, they are surprised to find in each other something they've been missing all their lives...

Reviews

Review of ‘Little Darlings’ by Books for Keeps [4 stars]

After her foray back to Victorian times in Hetty Feather, Jacqueline Wilson returns with a tale of 21st-century culture that could not be more contemporary. Ageing rock star Danny Kilman is still famous enough to get parts in films and appear in happy family photoshoots for ‘Hi!’ magazine. Sunset, his daughter, hates the celebrity limelight however, and longs for privacy and peace instead of paps and rowing parents. Then she meets Destiny, a girl from a rundown estate who looks uncannily like her, and is named after a long-forgotten Danny Kilman song. The two girls begin an unlikely friendship, and support each other as the glitter starts to come off the rock star lifestyle. Ultimately, the real reason behind their close bond is revealed.

Little Darlings is another winning Jacqueline Wilson story, which her fans will devour like celeb-obsessed readers with the latest issue of Hello, particularly with Nick Sharratt’s lovely ‘Hi!’ magazine parody on the cover. It’s not just fluff however as Wilson also provides young wannabes with food for thought about the nature of fame, and the downsides of celebrity, as she probes beyond the groomed public faces of her characters. Despite the rather engineered coincidence employed to bring them together, the moment when Destiny performs with her father thus revealing her paternity to the world, is genuinely moving.

Where Little Darlings occasionally falls down is in the trueness of her young heroines’ voices, particularly Sunset. ‘I fashioned her a little apron out of a tissue and she bustled about the house, diligently dusting with her paw’ is how she describes Sunset playing with one of her teddies. Though this is a 10-year-old who has been forced to grow up fast when she doesn’t really want to, her vocabulary is sometimes over-sophisticated, and her turn of phrase harks back almost to Hetty Feather. One ‘old-fashioned’ element I would have liked more of was the letter correspondence between Sunset and Destiny which evolves because Destiny does not have e-mail.

Still, with Destiny and Sunset only just beginning their public lives as sisters, you wouldn’t bet against there one day being a sequel to this pleasurable novel.   

About The Author

Jacqueline Wilson is an extremely well-known and hugely popular author. THE ILLUSTRATED MUM was chosen as British Children's Book of the Year in 1999 and was winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Award 2000. Jacqueline has won the prestigious Smarties Prize and the Children's Book Award for DOUBLE ACT, which was also highly commended for the Carnegie Medal. Jacqueline was awarded an OBE in 2002.

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award rewards the best in contemporary children's and young adult literature from all over the world. Michael Morpurgo has been shortlisted for the award, the winner of which will be announced in March 2010.

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