Little Darlings

Little Darlings by Jacqueline Wilson is a friendship story for 10 year olds about two girls who share a famous father and nothing else at all.

What happens

It's Destiny's birthday. Her mum wakes her by singing through the two teddy bears on her duvet, working their mouths like puppets, a game they've had going since Destiny was tiny.

Breakfast is bread and golden syrup with eleven pink candles stuck in it. The card is homemade, magazine cut-outs of everything Destiny likes best. Mum has spelled "daughter" wrong and Destiny wouldn't point that out in a million years.

That one scene tells you everything about the pair of them. Almost no money. An awful lot of love.

Then there's a second envelope with two train tickets to London in it, and a secret Destiny's mum has been sitting on for eleven years starts to move.

Sunset has the other version of the same story. Rock star dad, ex-model mum, photographers outside, little brother and sister who are famous too. It is a great deal lonelier than it sounds.

Destiny narrates her half herself and she's very good value. Dry, quick, completely unsentimental about how things are.

That's what gets you, actually. The note Mum leaves by the bed when she's working nights. The Danny Kilman quiz. The mattress they had to drag out to the bins. Destiny mentions the lot in the same cheerful voice, and your reader works out what she's describing a beat before she says it.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Destiny's mum once lived with a man called Steve. He hit her, then he started on Destiny, and the two of them left with two suitcases and went to a refuge. That is all in the first chapter, as something that happened and is finished with. Steve is long gone.

It's told plainly though, and the poverty around it is not softened either. Bed bugs, three jobs, being left on her own in the evenings, a ceiling that goes black with mould however often it's painted.

If your child is easily upset by that sort of thing, this is one to read alongside them, or to keep for later. If they already like stories about children quietly handling grown-up problems, Destiny is wonderful company and she never once feels sorry for herself.

And the waiting is delicious. You know what Destiny doesn't. You know what Sunset doesn't. Neither of them has a clue what's coming.

What to read next

If that half of the book is the bit that grips them, Lola Rose is in the library too. Another girl telling her own story, another mum with a sudden win and a violent man to get away from, and a brand-new name to try on when they reach London. It's every bit as honest, so it suits the same reader rather than a younger brother or sister.