Press

What the critics say

This is a fascinating, funnny and moving Victorian-era novel featuring Hetty Feather.
- Middlesbrough Evening Gazette

The feisty Hetty Feather is back, but she's changed her name to Sapphire Battersea in this fascinating story.
- Tesco Magazine

A brilliant Victorian-era novel featuring Hetty Feather. Jacqueline Wilson is a fabulous storyteller and girls over the age of nine will absolutely love her writing.
- Norwich Evening News

Wilson's latest book, illustrated by Nick Sharratt, is as wise, warm and deliciously readable as ever.
- Daily Express

Jacqueline Wilson fans have been waiting eagerly for the follow up to Hetty Feather, the moving story of a Victorian foundling, and Sapphire Battersea doesn't disappoint. It follows Hetty Feather through a name change a reunion with her mother and a new life of work.
- Sunday Express

A fascinating, funny and moving Victorian-era novel featurign Hetty Feather.
- Lincolnshire Echo

Jacqueline Wilson's 654th novel (or thereabouts) packs in plenty of bloody tubercular coughs and end-of-the-pier freaks (kindly drawn). This is the next book along in the Hetty Feather series, in which Wilson's care home heroine Tracy Beaker is basically reincarnated as a foundling hospital girl 135 years previously. Plucky Sapphire (formerly Hetty) goes out to earn her keep, fuelled by Wilson's class rage and carnivorous sense of yearning. KE
- Guardian Children's Book website

While not as gallivantingly icky as Simon's Sleeping Army, Sapphire Battersea packs in plenty of bloody tubercular coughs and end-of-the-pier freaks (kindly drawn). This is the next book along in the Hetty Feather series, in which Wilson's care home heroine Tracey Beaker is basically reincarnated as a foundling hospital girl 135 previously.
- The Observer

Hetty Feather was just a baby when her mother left her at the Foundling Hospital. Hetty longed to find her real mum - and finally her wish was granted. But just as they have found each other, they are separated again... Set in London in the 1870s, this sequel to Hetty Feather is a wonderfully evocative and original historical novel.
- girliegossip.com

There is much to enjoy in this sequel to Hetty Feather, the middle book in a proposed trilogy. Wilson treats her readers to an eclectic range of Victorian settings from life below stairs with formidable housekeeper Mrs Brisketts, to the backstage goings-on at a circus freak show with female giant Fantastic Freda.
Though the drudgery of servant life and the stirrings of young love are nicely conjured, it feels less compelling a tale than that in the first book however: perhaps inevitable so, given that the inspiration for Hetty Feather was so rooted in the moving true narratives of children at the real Foundlings Hospital. IN the big bad world, where terrible things routinely befell poor children, Hetty also seems to encounter a remarkably high number of remarkably kind strangers. But Hetty fans won't mind much and will be left longing to find out what happens to their heroine in book three.
One thing's for sure: exquisite a name as Sapphire Battersea is, it's now even more difficult to think of her as anything but Hetty Feather.
- Books for Keeps

Over 30 million of Dame Jacqueline Wilson's books have been sold in the UK, and it is easy to see why.
The creator of Tracy Beaker, Wilson's ability to relate to children's emotions is second to none and in Sapphire Battersea she has produced another surefire winner with a humourous Victorian-era tale.
It tells the story of Hetty Feather who was left at Foundling Hospital as a baby and who years to be called Sapphire Battersea because of her blue eyes.
Wheh she is reunited with her mother she gets a new name - Sapphire Battersea - and looks forward to her new life. But life doesn't always go as planned and Sapphire has to cope with many a trial as she experiences adventure, friendship and love.
- Driffield Times