Jacqueline Wilson

Children's Laureate 2005-7

Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath in 1945. She spent her childhood in Kingston-on-Thames in Surrey, where she still lives today, working full-time as a writer.

She was educated at Coombe Girls School, Surrey, relocating to Dundee to start work as a teenage journalist with D.C. Thomson, writing for Jackie teenage magazine, which was named after her.

She has written many books for children, and her sensitive understanding of modern children, the way they live and the problems they encounter, together with her sense of humour, have made her an extremely popular author, particularly with the nine to eleven year age range.

She has sold over ten million books, which have been translated into over thirty languages, and at one point in 2000, six of her books were listed among the top ten bestselling children's paperbacks.

Her books include The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991) and its sequel, The Dare Game (2000), which tell the story of a child who lives in residential and foster care; The Bed and Breakfast Star (1994), about a family living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation; and The Illustrated Mum (1999), who is covered in tattoos and has multiple boyfriends.

Bad Girls (1996) deals with the subject of bullying, and Double Act (1995), is about identical twins with very different personalities.

Her latest books include Candy Floss (2006), in which Floss faces a dilemma over whether to stay with her Dad in England or move to Australia with her Mum, and Starring Tracy Beaker (2006), which sees the return of the much-loved Tracy in a third instalment of her life story.

Jacqueline Wilson has written readers and books for younger children as well as radio plays for the BBC. Her series of books for older readers, Girls in Love (1997), Girls Under Pressure (1998), Girls Out Late (1999), and Girls in Tears (2002) has filmed for ITV television.

She wrote her own screen adaptation of Double Act for Channel 4, which won the Royal TV Society Best Children's Fiction Award, and The Story of Tracy Beaker is in its second television series, the third to be broadcast in 2004.

Her books have also been adapted for radio - including The Bed and Breakfast Star, The Story of Tracy Beaker and The Dare Game, all of which have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Stage adaptations of The Lottie Project (1997) and Double Act have toured nationally.

In 2002, Jacqueline Wilson was awarded an OBE for services to literacy in schools.