Awards and Honours
Wilson has won many awards including the Smarties Prize and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. The Illustrated Mum (1999) won the annual Guardian Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers, and the annual British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year; it also made the 1999 Whitbread Awards shortlist. The Story of Tracy Beaker won the 2002 Blue Peter People's Choice Award. Girls in Tears was the Children's Book of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards.
Two of her books were "Highly Commended" runners up for the Carnegie Medal in Literature, a distinction that was approximately annual at the time: The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991) and Double Act (1995). (Wilson has not won the annual Medal from British librarians, which recognises the year's best book for children or young adults written by a British subject; recently, simply the best published in the U.K.)
In June 2002, Wilson was given an OBE for services to literacy in schools, and from 2005 to 2007 she served as the fourth Children's Laureate. In that role Wilson urged parents and child-care providers to continue reading aloud to children long after they are able to read for themselves. She also campaigned to make more books available for blind people and campaigned against cutbacks in children's TV drama.
In October 2005 she received an honorary degree from the University of Winchester in recognition of her achievements in and on behalf of children's literature. In July 2007 Roehampton University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Letters) in recognition of her achievements in and on behalf of children's literature. She has also received honorary degrees from the University of Dundee, the University of Bath and Kingston University.
In the New Year Honours 2008, Jacqueline Wilson was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).
In July 2012, she was also elected an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
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