Jacqueline Wilson and the T word

Well, this is a new one on me.

I've heard of parents who try to prevent libraries from stocking books that they feel are objectionable. (Oddly enough, usually the books that I think are most worth reading).

But this is the first time that I've come across a parent who tries to force an author to change part of her work.

Jacqueline Wilson is a prolific writer.



She's sold literally millions of copies of her books here in the UK, and won several awards. Her books are quite gritty; she deals with tough issues that British children might have to contend with - things like being in foster care, or coping with an irresponsible mother, or becoming homeless. After you've read a few, the books begin feel a bit samey and formulaic (the child is always imaginative and creative, the parents always lack insight and are generally hopeless), but Emily loved them when she was 10 or so, and Sophie really enjoys them now.

The book in question is her latest book, My Sister Jodie. Coincidentally, Sophie had this one out of the library last week, and read it over the weekend. (She enjoyed it very much). It's about sisters, and class, and new beginnings, and death - some quite intense stuff, which I can see that some children would find upsetting. But a woman named Anne Dixon doesn't object to that. What she objects to is the use of the word "twat". (A word which was originally slang for "vagina", but which is now generally thought of as not much more than a coarser version of "twit".) And because she, along with two other people, has complained about the fact that this word is used three times in the book, Random House is going to replace the word with "twit" in the next edition, and Asda (Walmart owned chain of supermarkets) won't be stocking the book until the new edition comes out.

I find this depressing. Jacqueline Wilson is clearly a thoughtful and intelligent person. If she chose to use a particular word in her book, she did so for a reason. As a spokesman from Random House says, "The word 'twat' was used in context. It
was meant to be a nasty word on purpose, because this is a nasty character." Nevertheless, however, Jacqueline Wilson has agreed to change the word to the more benign "twit". Which I think is a shame. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't like what an author writes, then by all means, don't buy their books. But don't try to force them to change to be in accordance with your views.