Tag: BBC Big Read

The Story of Tracy Beaker

The first book I’ve read in a while from the BBC Big Read list

By Jacqueline Wilson

book coverI haven’t read any of the books on the BBC Big Read list for rather a long time. I really need to get a move on with it as I’ve still got well over a hundred books to go. (I’m reading the long list of 200 books, rather than the more doable 100 top books – it just wouldn’t be me if I made things easy for myself). I want to read the books on the list, I just keep getting distracted with motivational books and Nordic-Noir. So to get myself back on track I started with something nice and simple and quick to read – a children’s book.

In case you don’t know, Jacqueline Wilson is one of the UK’s most popular writers of children’s books and even spent a couple of years as Children’s Laureate. She can attract controversy because her books tackle real-life issues such as divorce, adoption and bullying.

The Story of Tracy Beaker was the novel that gained Wilson recognition. Set in a children’s home, the story is told from Tracy’s point of view.

Tracy has never known her dad. She does have a mum, but as no-one knows where she is Tracy has convinced herself that she’s a busy film star in Hollywood and will return to collect her once she’s got settled down.

Tracy is very good at convincing herself of things. She constantly gets into trouble, but believes the stories she makes up to explain her actions. She never cries, but does suffer an awful lot from hayfever which explains her watering red eyes.

Although Tracy pretends to be tough, at heart she’s a little girl wanting to be loved. Preferably by her mum, but failing that (or in the meantime) by a lovely couple who would want to foster her and give her the life she wants (i.e. lots of trips to McDonald’s).

Wilson really does have a way with words and manages to portray the characters in such a way that convinces the reader. She doesn’t dress her stories up with fairytale endings or wicked stepmothers; Tracy has never, for example, had to live in a cupboard under the stairs like another famous children’s book character had to do. Instead she keeps it real, which probably explains both why she is so popular and so controversial.

I enjoyed the story and easily read it over a couple of evenings. It made a good first book to get me back to reading from the list. Who knows, maybe I’ll tackle Moby Dick next.

Or maybe not.

Swallows and Amazons

This is book #57 on the BBC Big Read list.

by Arthur Ransome

This book is number 57 on the BBC’s Big Read list and is a children’s book.

The Swallows are four children, John, Susan, Titty and Roger, who are spending the summer in the Lake District with their mother, baby sister and baby sister’s nurse. Their father is away at sea but has given permission by telegram for them to take a boat and a couple of home-made tents and sail off to an island in the lake to camp by themselves.

The children spend most of their time in a make-believe world where the lake is a sea with the North Pole at one end and the Antarctic at the other. They have renamed all the places around the lake and so the river leading into it has become the Amazon, the village has become Rio and a pool part way along the river has become the Octopus Lagoon. They use sailor/pirate/explorer words for everyday things and people. The local people are referred to as natives and the charcoal burners as savages; a snake is a serpent; lemonade is grog; they don’t go fishing, instead they go whaling.

The children quickly settle into a peaceful routine on the island, but then find themselves under attack by a couple of Amazon pirates. The arrow-firing Amazons are two sisters, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, who are also staying by the lake with their mother. The Amazons have their own boat and had previously claimed the island as their own. They do not take kindly to the intruding Swallows and the two sides declare war. However, they are soon united in battle against the mean Captain Flint (aka the Amazons’ Uncle Jim) who lives on a nearby houseboat.

Adventures follow and the Swallows and Amazons find ‘treasure’ which had been stolen from Captain Flint. This endears him to the children and he gives them his parrot and agrees to lead them on a bigger adventure the following summer.

The book was first published in 1930 and the story is set in the 1920s. It always shocks me a bit when I’m reminded of how big the gap between the classes was in those days and how the working classes would be treated as so inferior. This is the case with this book. The children, with their naval father and baby sister’s nurse, are obviously middle-class. The local farmers and villagers refer to them as Master Roger, Miss Susan and so on. When a policeman comes to the island to follow up a complaint from Captain Flint the Amazon sisters, who know him, are downright rude to him and talk down to him as though he is a naughty boy – ‘as long as you’re good we won’t tell your mother’. The policeman is frightened and chastised and hastily leaves.

All in all, I enjoyed the book though I’m glad I don’t have to teach the children – I think they’d be damned annoying and precocious in real life and I doubt I’d last a day with them before I’d be sacked for insubordination!

The Name of the Rose – film

I’ve watched the film, now I just need to read the book.

The Name of the Rose is book number 174 on the BBC Big Read list. I’ve had it on my shelves for a long time but haven’t yet got round to reading it. The book was made into a film in 1986 and stars Sean Connery and Christian Slater. I’ve just watched it for the first time and it’s motivated me to read the book. The film is good, but from past experience I know they’re never usually as good as the book, so I’m glad I’ve seen the film first.


The story is set in a monastery high on an isolated hill in 1300’s Italy. As a Franciscan monk and his novice, played by Connery and Slater, arrive for a debate ahead of their peers, a man is found murdered. Then another one. And another. Connery and Slater turn into medieval sleuths to solve the mysterious crimes and find a secret library in the process. Unfortunately the Inquisition arrives before they can solve the murders and three innocent people find themselves about to be burnt at the stake. It all ends happily however. Well, at least it ends happily for all except the two people who don’t get rescued from the stake in time, the Inquisitor who is killed by his own torture devices, and the library which is destroyed. But apart from that, a happy ending.


I must read the book.