Bad girl

Author: Jacqueline Wilson
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: This book has sold nearly 9,000,000 copies in the UK alone and has been translated into nearly 40 languages, becoming a global phenomenon. Jacqueline Wilson proves that stories about bad girls can also be good stories. She powerfully illustrates the huge physical and emotional changes experienced by a fifth-grade student. As always, Jacqueline Wilson does an amazing job of perfectly blending believable stories with thought-provoking humor. With her keen intuition, she humorously depicts the real-life issues children encounter during their growth.
Mandy's parents are much older than her classmates' parents and look particularly outdated. Their old-fashioned image, along with their excessive doting on her, combined with her own overly short stature, her eyes, and her pigtails—even her mother's insistence on dressing her in childish pink clothes—make Mandy a target of ridicule among her classmates, and she is often bullied by her taller peers. Sometimes, Mandy dreams that her parents are not her real parents; she is adopted, and her real parents are young and trendy, and one day they will come to take her away.
Later, Mandy meets a newly adopted girl named Tanya from the family next door. Although only fourteen, Tanya is made up with heavy makeup, wearing crop tops and high heels, looking like a very cool older girl. Mandy can hardly believe she can be friends with her and is thus changed by this.