Same! My parents got divorced and my mum got me a book from Jacqueline Wilson called ‘The Suitcase Kid’ about a girl called Andy and her struggle in coping with her parents divorce.

I have special memories of Bad Girls. It was the first Jacqueline Wilson book I’d ever read, and I stumbled on it at the time I needed it most. I was quite close in age to Mandy and I was also being badly bullied at school. It was a horrible lonely time, and it felt as if Wilson had seen right into my head and based Mandy on my own worries and hopes.

I quite often hear people being dismissive about Wilson - her writing is too ‘easy’, it’s too repetitive, it doesn’t push children out of their comfort zone. While some of that may be true, especially the recycling of plotlines and character types, I think the critics have missed the point. Children themselves are often repetitive in how they play and what they like to do, and they do that because the repetition brings them something important. A kid having a difficult time could pick up any of Wilson’s books and on some level think, “Someone gets how I’m feeling. This is just like me!”. Other kids might be gently nudged into thinking about ‘weird’ classmates in a kinder way. I love how skillfully she’s able to assume the perspectives of children of all different ages too.