Tracy Beaker returns as a single mother in new Jacqueline Wilson book

Author reveals what to expect from the feisty heroine, in a new book out this year

Jacqueline Wilson (Getty)

Jacqueline Wilson has said she came up with the idea for her new book after seeing mothers holding copies of The Story of Tracy Beaker they owned as children.

27 years after the beloved children’s author first wrote about a feisty young girl growing up in a care home nicknamed “the dumping ground”, she is now set to release a new book with Tracy as a single mother raising her own, challenging nine-year-old daughter.

Speaking to Donna Ferguson in the Observer, Wilson said: “It’s stimulating to think about how people develop as they get older,” she said. “Tracy has been a character that’s haunted me. She’s the sort of person who sticks in your mind.

“When I realised just how long ago it was since I wrote the first Tracy Beaker book, I thought: if we were in real time, Tracy herself would be in her 30s. And I’ve always thought that, even though Tracy had lots of problems in her life and a pretty rubbish mum who was never there for her, Tracy herself would be a good mum, no matter what.”

The new book, due to be released in October, will be narrated from the perspective of Tracy’s daughter Jess, and is aimed at younger readers aged 7-11 but also adults and teenagers who have enjoyed Wilson’s Tracy Beaker series since the beginning.

Now an adult, Tracy is having to raise her daughter Jess on a low income in an expensive city as she finds herself in and out of work.

Wilson, 71, has written more than 100 novels and sold more than 40 million books in the UK alone.

In an interview with The Independent last year she criticised the school curriculum for not leaving enough room for children to read for pleasure.

“When children pick up a book often teachers ask them questions to make sure that they’ve read it and understood it. Well, I think that just kills the whole thing dead,” she said.

“At school we used to have story time, normally at the end of the day, when we just listened to a story being read aloud to us. It was fun. That’s what it is all about.”