Book Club~ The Suitcase Kid

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That's right, Habbox has voted, and this weeks Book of the Week is the old favourite...



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"My family always lived at Mulberry Cottage. Mum, Dad, me – and Radish, my Sylvanian rabbit. But now Mum lives with Bill the Baboon and his three kids. Dad lives with Carrie and her twins. And where do I live? I live out of a suitcase. One week with Mum's new family, one week with Dad's. It's as easy as ABC. That's what everyone says. But all I want is to go home – back to Mulberry Cottage . . . "

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Discuss 'The Suitcase Kid' for your chance to win 1 months forum VIP.

Well done to Samanfa who has been nominated for the 'Book Club Member of the Month' title due to her contribution to this thread!

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Discussion is now open and will close in a week.

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Happy Discussing!

[Mathew]

I think I may have read this when I was younger actually... one of the few Jacqueline Wilson books that I managed to make it through. Depite them being primarily aimed at females, in my opinion, I do think they're interesting when you begin to analyse them. The Suitcase Kid, for example, discusses the thoughts and feelings that are going through this fictional character's head when her parents divorce. Even though it's fictional, I do think it may help children in a similar position; rather like some kind of closure that they're not alone and it's perfectly fine. The nuclear family is no longer the obvious norm, and Wilson targets her books at this newly emerging group of people. Which is, of course, a very clever move.

[Sloths]

Jacqueline Wilson has always been one of my favourite authors, the books are a little young for me now but I still love to read them. The Suitcase Kid is actually one that I didn't read in my spare time, we studied this in English in I think it was year 3 or 4. I haven't read it since then though so my memory is a bit awful but I do remember me and my friend got obsessed with Sylvanian Families after this lmao. I think what Mathew said above is pretty true, most of Wilson's books targets an area of society that most won't care to write about. Instead of writing about the perfect family most of her stories involve the non-nuclear family, whether it be divorced parents such as this one or single parents which makes them somewhat realistic and relateable to society.
Even though this isn't one of my favourite Wilson books I still remember it was a pretty good one!

[Samantha]

I must say i prefer other work by her as opposed to this one but I enjoy the ones with female main characters more. The key memory from this book is when her father says they can go for ice cream yet she asks and would prefer to go to mulberry cottage which enraged her father thus changing his mind about taking her anywhere. I can't really relate to Andy much I do feel for her, shifted from pillar to post, she is young afterall and it appears traumatic for her, not wanting to believe her parents won't get back together. What Ive found in jacquline Wilson's books is that in the end the character whom hated the evil step mum grows to like them and it's happened too often in this case. I think the author took a different perspective from other books and it did work well, although not my favourite.

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[Ed.]

I found myself unable to put this book down. The structure is somewhat unusual (though clever) as each chapter follows the alphabet ('A is for...Andrea'...etc). This may be quite intriguing for young readers and also encourages them to finish the book and discover what each letter stands for in Andrea's life. When approaching the content, some readers may feel the book paints a negative picture of step families, though i must say I don't agree. It simply outlines how difficult it can be to adjust and I am certain that young readers will find the book helpful. While many will be able to relate to the character 'Andrea' (the 'suitcase kid', whose parents have divorced), the story may also help children unfamilliar with divorce to understand what friends may be going through.

[Samantha]

I know I reviewed this earlier but following on from Ed's post, I was the opposite of you, I could put it down but I think I read the book midway through most of the Jacqueline Wilson series therefore, what I expected wasn't like the ones previously. I found myself looking pages forward just to see when the next chapter began as I often read at night thus not wanting to put it down until I had completed said chapter. I also like the fact that her 'best friend' was a cuddly toy - Radish, you could tell he meant a lot to her even with the sheer frustration when he got stuck in a hole. You could feel her pain and I know I could too as I have old things that mean a lot to me, I wouldn't throw them away and they're sentimental to me.

Some people could see Andrea from different perspectives I think, as with readers parents' splitting up and getting a divorce, moving on etc. it could be traumatic in a child's life but if you've been through it you could reflect on that. I can only imagine and I felt for her, it didn't seem there were any advantages to her with her parents' divorcing and such. The book is written in such a way it creates empathy a lot like I explained earlier and what I find with specific books, I want to know more, I want to know what happened next and how she grew up. Things like that interest me, such as many programmes I've watched and books in the series I've read. Sometimes, I get my answers such as the Girls In Love, Girls In Tears etc. you were a part of their life for a while and knew their story. With this, you didn't really know what to expect due to her not writing like this much previously.