Dame Jacqueline Wilson

Award-winning children’s author Jacqueline Wilson is now a Dame Commander of the British Empire, the female equivalent of a knight.

Wilson, 62, who enjoys rock-star status in the United Kingdom, has won many awards, including the Smarties Prize and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. She also served as the Children’s Laureate from 2005 to 2007, a position awarded in the U.K. once every two years to a distinguished writer or illustrator of children’s books. Her breakthrough book, The Story of Tracy Beaker (Doubleday, 1991), about an abandoned girl looking for a home, inspired a popular BBC series. Wilson’s fans—mostly seven- to 14-year-old girls—love her gripping plots about dysfunctional families, homelessness, and domestic violence, to name a few dicey topics.

The honor of dame was bestowed by the queen, but recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public.