Queenie

Queenie is a novel for young readers by the English writer Jacqueline Wilson, published in January 2013. It is set in England in 1953, the year of the coronation.

Elsie Kettle is the girl at the centre of it. She lives with her grandmother, and the great event of her year is meant to be a trip to London to see the coronation of Elizabeth II. It is a book about a long stay in hospital and about the people a child meets there.

Instead, both of them fall ill with tuberculosis and are taken into hospital. Elsie is put on a children's ward, where she has to get used to being away from home and to the treatment she is given. Nobody tells her very much about what is going to happen to her.

What makes the ward bearable is the other children she meets there and the hospital cat, who is called Queenie. The book was illustrated by Nick Sharratt and was well received when it appeared, and it is one of several she wrote about girls of the same age.