Read Hetty Feather: Little Stars free in the Little Reads app.
Hetty Feather: Little Stars by Jacqueline Wilson is a Victorian adventure for 9 year olds about two runaway girls trying to talk their way onto a stage.
It opens with Hetty waking in a shop doorway, aching all over, not sure for a moment which of her names she is. She and little Diamond have bolted from Tanglefield's circus on the clowns' penny-farthing and the tip of Hetty's ear is still throbbing where the ringmaster's whip caught it.
This is not the beginning of Hetty's story and she tells you so herself. She has had three names already and the foundling hospital, service and the circus are all behind her. Your reader can absolutely start here. They will just be meeting a girl who has had several lives by the age of fifteen.
The plan is the Cavalcade music hall. Hetty is tiny for her age and she has worked out that looking like a child is her best card, for Diamond too.
A market trader called Mr Perkins buys them breakfast and starts asking questions. Watching Hetty lie to him is one of the best bits in the whole opening. She is good at it, she knows she is good at it, and she feels wretched about it at the same time.
Diamond is the reason for all of it. Her father sold her to a clown called Beppo for five guineas. Beppo kept her half starved so she would stay light enough to tumble, and he beat her when she made the smallest mistake.
Worth knowing, and it is all laid out in the first chapter rather than saved up for later. Hetty describes the whip, the beatings and the sale plainly, because they are the reason the girls are running. Diamond still flinches whenever a man raises his voice. None of it is drawn out, but a child who finds cruelty to a younger child hard to read will find it hard here.
If your reader can take that, what they get is a narrator with enormous plans and a very short fuse, tooting imaginary fanfares on a stolen bicycle and rounding on a gang of children in the gutter who dare to laugh at her.
The two of them together are the warm bit. Diamond calls Hetty a dear little big sister. She sings hymns at the top of her voice and invents the words she cannot remember.
If they want Diamond's own story, Hetty Feather: Diamond is in the library. She tells it herself, with Hetty writing it down for her, and it goes right back to the family who were disappointed she was a girl.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
No trial. No payment. Just download.
