Katy is an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her father, stepmother and five siblings. She is irritable and obstinate, and tends to get in trouble at school for getting into arguments with ‘poor, perfect little Eva Jenkins’ and speaking back to teachers. She gets along brilliantly with her perfect sister Clover, but fights and snaps at her stepsister Elsie.
One day a friend asks her to come to a skate park with him, but when forbidden she sneaks out by herself. When she comes home she is caught by her stepmother and punished. She makes herself a rope swing and everything goes downhill from there.
Katy is a modernised version of What Katy Did (Susan Coolidge, published in 1872). It is written by Jacqueline Wilson, and the style is very similar to that of Four Children and It (a modernised version of Five Children and It, also rewritten by Jacqueline Wilson). What Katy Did and Katy are very similar, apart from the fact that they have an age difference of nearly 150 years. When Jacqueline Wilson read What Katy Did, she thought it was a bit unbelievable that Katy (a scrappy, scruffy child) would become a perfect little angel when she got hurt. So she has tried to make this book more realistic with Katy’s behaviour and injuries.
I think I actually prefer this version to the older one because the characters are more lifelike and the ideas more realistic. Most of the characters have the same names and personalities, but Jacqueline Wilson has made some changes to bring the book up-to-date. I recommend this excellent book to people who are 12-14 years old, and rate it 9.85 out of 10.
-
Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
