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JACQUELINE Wilson’s children’s books feature five-year-olds being physically abused, 14-year-olds having affairs with their teachers, and mothers leaving their babies in dustbins. So when the former children’s laureate claims our children "act like adults at an alarmingly early age", resurrecting the debate that they are being robbed of their childhoods, she does so with a degree of authority. "Our society has made a collective decision to stop children from being children", said the best-selling author, 62. "We’re expecting them to grow up much too quickly, force-feeding our own materialistic and consumptive culture into their mouths. Much of the innocence of childhood is being robbed from them," she said. Fiercely strict parents, ugly divorces, terminal illness, and various kinds of abuse are all common themes in Dame Jacqueline's work. Given such gritty content, is there not a whiff of hypocrisy about her outrage? "I wish I could write novels in which children didn't have to confront these issues. But my role as a writer is to hold out a metaphorical hand to these children, and to reflect the difficulties they face in an imaginative way. Sometimes it’s best to work by implication, and leave out the gory details—I’d hate to think I’d given kids nightmares." — By arrangement with The Independent
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