Little Hetty is abandoned at the orphanage door - the Foundling Hospital - just after being born by her mother, and soon she was named Hetty Feather. She was small, sweet and loving, with burning blue eyes (and as she insists, no hair), but as well as she was cute she could scream.

Nurse Winterson is kind, unlike the sharp-faced other nurses who thrust her into hard cots and shove bottles in her tiny, pierced lips. When a kind lady adopts her, Hetty is happy for once in her life. But as she turns four, and then five, and then six, dear Hetty realises her unfortunate future.

Jem is one of Hetty's older brothers, her favourite brother, who made Squirrel Houses with her and pushed her in their smallest wheelbarrows. When finally Hetty moves up to her foster mother’s house, she is welcomed by a burly man poking her bellybutton and brothers’ and sisters’ and mothers’ kisses. But as she turns six, she and some of her brothers (apart from her dear, dear Jem) and occasional sister are sent off to the Foundling Hospital once more.

The unfortunate future is that Hetty has to go back, back down to the terrifying Foundling Hospital, to be yelled at up to being shut in the attic for a day and a night. Can she and her siblings make do with this horrid nonsense of home-sickness and disgrace? The Matron there is horrible, cutting her hair shorn in case of lice, throwing away Hetty’s Sunday Best clothes and her darling rag doll. The only trace she has of Jem is her sixpence, and will life get worse?

Hetty Feather is a very good book, highly recommended for mature eight-year-old girls like me to thirteen-year-old teenagers. I had never thought Jacqueline as a stupendously good author with any of her books, but Hetty Feather is a marvel to me! ( )

I love it when Hetty Feather cares for people and tries to go on adventures to find her real mother. She gets in trouble along the way but the story is very interesting. ( )

Entirely typical Jacqueline Wilson, but this time set in a world of victorian foundlings, not modern day dysfunctional families. Good fun. ( )

Hetty Feather is left at the hospital which is like an orphanage as a little baby when she is born. A few months later she is taken to a cottage in the country side and lives there until she is 7. Then she must be taken back to the hospital to train to be a servant. Thats what most girls did in London back when Hetty lived. Hetty continues to look for her mother and the most unexpected person tells her she is her mother. ( )