SuitabookLove Lessons
Jacqueline Wilson
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the teenager, especially around the teacher–pupil relationship and family control. Pause to ask what each character can responsibly choose, without treating Prue’s feelings as blameworthy.
- Themes
- Freedom and parental control: Prue and Grace have been educated at home by a controlling father; after his stroke, their mother sends them to school and later supports their continuing attendance despite his anger. The story presents the girls’ new freedom as significant while also showing family dependence, fear and disruption. It may invite consideration of when protection becomes control.
- School belonging and social conflict: Prue enters a comprehensive school for the first time, struggles socially, is ridiculed, and becomes involved in conflict surrounding Toby and Rita; she later has difficulty finding someone to talk to. School is shown as a place of both exclusion and possible connection, including Prue’s friendship with Toby and her bond with an art teacher.
- An unequal teacher–pupil relationship: Prue develops feelings for her married art teacher, babysits his children and interprets his behaviour as possibly reciprocating. The plot account includes secrecy, kissing and his attempts to create distance. The relationship is presented through Prue’s intense feelings but also includes clear imbalance: Rax is an adult teacher, husband and parent. His actions create serious boundary questions rather than a simple romance.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for family illness and loss of independence, controlling parenting, school ridicule, romantic and physical intimacy involving a teenager and an adult teacher, dishonesty, and a physical fight.