The intimidating front door could belong to a gothic castle. I half-expect it to be opened by a giant butler called Lurch with a forbidding: “You rang?” Instead Jaqueline Wilson, aged 77 and slight as a pipe cleaner, answers with a smile warm enough to heat her huge home. She leads us into the living room, and before we know it there are drinks, doughnuts and chocolate biscuits in front of us. I’m here with my younger daughter, Maya. There was no way Maya was missing this. She is one of many young people whose lives were transformed by Wilson. Maya was a late reader. Then she discovered Wilson’s novels about kids struggling to find their place in the world and was hooked.
That was in the early 00s, around the time Wilson published Sleepovers, one of her most popular novels. Twenty-two years on, she’s finally written a follow-up, The Best Sleepover In the World.
