Top Ten Tuesday | Throwback Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is a throwback freebie, so I thought I'd talk about one of my absolute favourite childhood authors: Jacqueline Wilson. I'm not sure how well-known she is outside the UK, but Wilson's a prolific children's writer here and I read anything and everything she wrote and spent a lot of my childhood re-reading my favourites.

Vicky Angel: This was one of the very first Jacqueline Wilson books I can remember reading, and one of the first books I ever read to talk about death without being patronising. I have a red-haired sister called Vickie and this book has a red-haired character called Vicky so I couldn't resist picking it up - if I remember correctly my mum and I originally got it to give to someone else as a birthday present, but then I ended up reading it instead and my mum let me keep it.

Best Friends: I ended up moving four times as a child due to my dad's job, and leaving friends behind never got any easier, so this book spoke to me in a way a lot of Wilson's other books didn't. There are other books of hers I love more than this one, but this one will always have a special place in my heart all the same.

The Illustrated Mum: I re-read this book so many times when I was little. If I had to choose I'd probably say this one is my favourite of all her books.

How to Survive Summer Camp: I remember this book really surprising me by how much I ended up enjoying it. I borrowed it from the library because I needed something new to read and I knew I loved Jacqueline Wilson but I wasn't sure if this one would be for me. I ended up re-reading it several times.

The Diamond Girls: Another of my all-time favourites and another that I re-read a lot as a child. As one of three sisters myself, I've always loved reading stories about families with multiple daughters.

Take a Good Look: One of Wilson's darker stories, Take a Good Look follows a visually impaired girl after she's kidnapped. I remember feeling so nervous reading this as a child, and this was another one I re-read a few times because it got me thinking about what I would do if something like that had happened to me.

Midnight: This one's probably one of Wilson's most sinister stories, it's the one novel of hers I remember making me feel really uneasy, yet it's still another one I know I read more than once.

Girls Under Pressure: I loved the Girls series growing up, featuring probably the first overweight protagonist I ever encountered in fiction which meant a lot to a young girl whose journey into puberty involved gaining weight. This book in the series, in particular, stuck with me because protagonist Ellie becomes so obsessed with comparing her body type to that of her friend's that she tries all these crazy diets that make her unwell. It made me feel a little less alone in my strange new body.

Lola Rose: My third favourite alongside The Illustrated Mum and The Diamond Girls, and one that I can still vividly remember re-reading time and time again. I just couldn't get enough of this one.

Glubbslyme: This is probably my least favourite of the ten books here, and the one I read the least amount of times, but it has to have a mention because it features a witch and I remember it being a lot of fun to read. I loved saying the title when I was little, too.

What did you talk about this week?