Authors: Jacqueline Wilson
Lottie Project
Contents
About the Book
I don’t want to do a boring old project. Who wants to be like everyone else? I’m doing a diary . . .
Hi! I’m Charlie (DON’T call me Charlotte – ever!). History is boring, right? Wrong! The Victorians weren’t all deadly dull and drippy. Lottie certainly isn’t. She’s eleven – like me – but she’s left school and has a job as a nursery maid. Her life is really hard, just work work work, but I bet she’d know what to do about my mum’s awful boyfriend and his wimpy little son. I bet she wouldn’t mess it all up like I do . . .
Another brilliantly crafted story from the prize-winning children’s favourite, Jacqueline Wilson – now with a new introduction by the author!
For Rupa Patel (author of the Jacqueline Wilson Quiz Book) and special thanks to everyone at Burscough Primary School
When my daughter Emma was little she was passionately interested in the Victorians. She begged me to play Victorian imaginary games with her. She always wanted to be the Lady of the House. I was generally the servant girl. I had to curtsy to her and say ‘Yes, my lady,’ and do whatever she commanded. You can see why Emma loved this game!
When she got older I read Victorian books aloud to her while she drew endless pictures of Victorian ladies with bustles and button boots. We wrote a series of letters to each other, pretending to be Victorian schoolgirls. Emma wrote a long family saga herself called
The Treadwells
. It was much better than anything that I could have written at age nine or ten.
Because of Emma’s enthusiasm for the Victorian age, I’d imagined that most children would find it an interesting period in history. When I’d go into schools to give talks I’d often see pictures of Queen Victoria pinned up on the wall above a special display of
Victorian
objects, white nighties and long drawers and washboards and blue medicine bottles and jet jewellery.
‘Oh, you’re doing the Victorians this term, you lucky things!’ I’d exclaim.
The children would nearly always wrinkle their noses at me in astonishment.
‘We hate the Victorians. They are sooo boring!’
So I got it into my head to write about a girl who thinks doing her Victorian project is going to be intensely boring. The working title of my story was Doing the Victorians – yuck! I decided that my Charlie would invent a very similar girl to herself living in late Victorian times. This Lottie had to go out to work as a nursery maid – and as Charlie does her research you can compare and contrast their lives.
Most children will read the story to find out more about Charlie and her mum, and see how Charlie copes when Mum gets a new boyfriend. Charlie even gets a kind of boyfriend herself. But it would be wonderful if just a few readers get interested in the Lottie sections and decide that maybe the Victorians aren’t so boring after all!
SCHOOL
I KNEW EXACTLY
who I was going to sit next to in class. Easy-peasy, simple-pimple. It was going to be Angela, with Lisa sitting at the nearest table to us. I’m never quite sure if I like Lisa or Angela best, so it’s only fair to take turns.
Jo said what if Angela and Lisa want to sit together with
you
behind or in front or at the side. I just smiled at her. I don’t want to sound disgustingly boastful but I’m the one Angela and Lisa are desperate to sit next to. Lots of the girls want to be best friends with me, actually. I’m just best friends with Lisa and Angela, but anyone can be in our special Girls’ Gang. Any girl. No boys allowed. That goes without saying. Even though I just did.
But guess what happened that first day of term. We got this new teacher. We knew we wouldn’t be getting Mrs Thomas because when we broke up in the summer her tummy could barely fit behind her desk. Her tummy could barely fit behind
her
smock
. You could see her tummy button through the material, like a giant press fastener.
When I was a very little kid I used to think that’s how babies were born. They grew inside the mother and then when they were ready the mum pressed her tummy button and out they popped. I told Jo how I’d got it all sussed out. Don’t laugh. I was
very
little.
Jo
laughed. ‘Dream on, Charlie,’ she said. ‘If only it were that easy.’
That’s my name, Charlie. OK, my full name is Charlotte Alice Katherine Enright, but nobody ever calls me that. Jo and Lisa and Angela and all the kids at school call me Charlie. Some of the boys call me Cake or Carrot Cake or Cakehole, but they’re just morons, though they think they’re dead original. (Note the initials of my name. Got it?) But right since I was born, all the way through nursery and primary, no-one’s ever called me Charlotte. Until this new teacher.
Miss Beckworth. She was new so I thought she’d be young. When you get a new young teacher they’re often ever so strict the first few weeks just to show you who’s boss, and then they relax and get all friendly. Then you can muck about and do whatever you want.
I
love
mucking about, doing daft things and being a bit cheeky and making everyone laugh. Even the teachers. But the moment I set eyes on Miss Beckworth I knew none of us were going to be laughing. She might be new but she certainly wasn’t young. She had grey hair and grey eyes and a grey
and
white blouse and a grey skirt and laced-up shoes, with a laced-up expression on her face to match. When she spoke her teeth were quite big and stuck out a bit, but I put all thought of Bugs Bunny imitations right out of my head.
There are some teachers – just a few – who have YOU’D BETTER NOT MESS WITH ME! tattooed right across their foreheads. She frowned at me with this incredibly fierce forehead and said, ‘Good morning. This isn’t a very good start to the new school year.’
I stared at her. What was she on about? Why was she looking at her watch? I wasn’t late. OK, the school bell had gone as I was crossing the playground, but you always get five minutes to get to your classroom.
‘It’s three minutes past nine,’ Miss Beckworth announced. ‘You’re late.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘We’re not counted late until it’s five past.’
I didn’t say it cheekily. I was perfectly polite. I was trying to be helpful, actually.
‘You’re
certainly
not off to a good start,’ she goes. ‘First you’re late. And then you argue. My name’s Miss Beckworth. What’s your name?’
‘Charlie, Miss Beckworth.’ (See,
ever
so polite – because I could see I had to proceed d-e-l-i-c-a-t-e-l-y.)
‘Your proper name?’
‘Charlie Enright.’
‘We don’t seem to be connecting correctly, Miss Enright. Charlie isn’t a proper name. It’s a diminutive.’
She was trying to make
me
look pretty diminutive, obviously. I tried to act cool but I could feel my cheeks flushing. I have this very white skin that can be a real problem when I get mad or embarrassed. When you have a lot of long red hair and you get a red face too you start to look as if someone’s put a match to you.
‘Are you
Charles
Enright?’
I can’t
stand
it when teachers go all sarcastic on you. A few of the kids tittered nervously. That posh prat Jamie laughed out loud. Typical. Angela and Lisa were looking all anguished, dying for me.