Reading Jacqueline Wilson
This one-day conference on 20th October 2011 celebrates the work of award-winning British children’s writer Jacqueline Wilson as part of the Jacqueline Wilson Festival at the University of Central Lancashire. The conference will be preceded by a public event by Jacqueline Wilson on 19th October and Jacqueline herself will be attending some of the conference.
Areas for consideration
- Autobiography and becoming a writer
- Telling life stories
- Bildungsroman and identity
- Growing up with/through Jacqueline Wilson’s characters
- Jacqueline Wilson’s books as crossover fiction (selected and read by adults for pleasure)
- Jacqueline Wilson books as moral or didactic tales
- Using the books as teaching material
- Encouraging reading and literacy
- Using the stories therapeutically
- Jacqueline’s influence on the development of ‘issues’-based realism in children’s literature
- Concerns parents have about the issues e.g. that they are too ‘adult’ or too ‘real’
- The representation of issues such as divorce, adoption, truancy, stealing, addiction etc.
- Representations within the books e.g. of gender, age, parents, teachers, social workers
- Creating television and/or stage adaptations
- Tracy Beaker – books and TV programme
- Jacqueline Wilson magazine
- Publishing history of Jacqueline Wilson’s books
- Influence of Jacqueline Wilson’s books on children’s writing and publishing
- The Jacqueline Wilson brand
- Working partnership between Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt
- Relationships between text and illustration
- The pleasure of the texts
- Jacqueline Wilson Fans
- Interactive website
- Creative writing based on or inspired by Jacqueline Wilson’s oeuvre
Proposals
We welcome proposals from a number of perspectives and disciplines, such as literature, creative writing, publishing, journalism, marketing, education, social work and so on. Individual papers, posters and workshops as well as panel discussions around specific topics (panel leader needs to organize the panel and submit an abstract) may be submitted. 300 word abstracts should be sent to Helen Day (HFDay@uclan.ac.uk) by November 30, 2010. Decisions will be made by January 31, 2011. We will be pursuing options for publication.