The Worry Web Site

Jacqueline Wilson's The Worry Web Site is a school story for 7 year olds about the things children will type in but never say out loud.

What happens

Mr Speed is not like the other teachers. He whizzes down corridors, he skips across the playground and he once fell over doing fancy footwork and said a very rude word.

He has also scrapped Circle Time, where you sit round fidgeting and are supposed to talk about your problems. Instead there is a website on the classroom computer. You type the thing that is bothering you, you leave your name off, and everybody else types back with something kind and useful.

In come the worries. A sneaky sister. Being bottom of the class. Horrible nightmares. A pet rat that has died. One of the boys likes one of the girls and goes very pink when everyone giggles.

Then there is Holly.

Holly types that she thinks she is going to get a stepmother. She knows all about stepmothers because she has read her mum's old book of fairy tales to bits, and Snow White's is the worst of the lot.

The trouble is that this one is lovely. It is Miss Morgan, who teaches Holly's little sister, wears purple suede boots and lets Hannah sit on her lap and chatter. Holly used to like her more than any teacher in the school. Now Dad has put on his good tie and taken her out for an Italian, and Holly has worked out what has been going on all along.

So she adds a second line to her worry. She wishes the woman was wicked. Then she would know what to do.

You get all of it in Holly's own voice, which is the reason to read it. She is funny about her dad's hair. She is fierce about her fairy tale book. She is nine tenths grown up and one tenth still wanting to climb into the playhouse in the infants' classroom and shut the little door.

Some of it is properly sad. Holly's mum had depression, cried a lot and left when Hannah was a baby, and Holly has been doing the mothering ever since. That is all established before the story starts rather than something that happens in it. A boy in the class types in that he wets the bed, and although his teacher is furious about it, half of them still call him a horrible name in the playground. Children who have been on the wrong end of that will feel it.

Small thing. This is an American edition, so it is sneakers and preschool and favorite with no u.

What to read next

If Holly gets under your reader's skin, try Rent a Bridesmaid. Tilly lives with her dad too, keeps a photo of her mum by the bed and wants something she is almost too embarrassed to say out loud.