Books

Tracy Beaker the Single Mother

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19 March 2018

By Bronwen

If there’s one book character who deserves a follow-up story, it’s Tracy Beaker. Written by Jacqueline Wilson, the books and TV show followed Tracy, a young girl who had been abandoned by her mother and placed into a children’s home nicknamed the Dumping Ground. Fans of the show will know that Tracy was very hard work for the care workers and constantly found herself in trouble or telling someone to “bog off!”.

Now, we will be able to see how far Tracy has come since her Dumping Ground days thanks to Jacqueline Wilson’s upcoming book. My mum Tracy Beaker will be told from the perspective of Jess, Tracy’s nine-year-old daughter. The story will follow the mother-daughter duo trying to navigate life as a single parent family in London.

The charm of the Tracy Beaker books is that Tracy is one of the most complex and tragic characters ever written for children. She is constantly longing for her mother to come and rescue her, something that has never and will never happen. To cope with the fact that she will never have a normal family while she’s still a child, she fantasises and lies about her mother being a glamorous Hollywood actress and a generous millionaire. It will be interesting to see if thirty-year-old Tracy will have come to terms with her mother’s absence from her life.

This also raises a question of Tracy’s own parenting skills. Will she be a good mother to Jess despite being fostered as a teenager and completely missing out on having a mother in her childhood?

Wilson has hinted in interviews that Tracy will be a good mother and that she will finally get her happy ending.

‘My Mum Tracy Beaker’ will be incredibly nostalgic for adults and teenagers who grew up reading the books and/or watching the show.

The book will be launched in October this year.

 

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