Growing Up With Judy Blume

When I was a kid, Judy Blume was one of the most important people I had never met. I enjoyed many books she’d written, but it was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret that I read more times than any other book. By the time I got a little older and started reading Deenie, she’d become my unofficial guide for what I should expect in the milestones of my life.

Those two books were very influential because they gave me clues about What Would Happen Next. What would it be like to get my period? What would it be like to make out with a boy? I needed to know, and these books helped me start to put those pieces together.

Judy Blume’s stories were both entertaining and enlightening. I cared about the characters, I cared about what happened to them, and I identified with their humor, their anger, and their conflicts with their friends and families. Her characters felt real to me. Don’t get me wrong—I also loved reading mystery, fantasy, and horror stories. But I was pretty sure that I was never going to become a princess, and I was never going to turn into a werewolf. But being embarrassed while bra shopping with my mother? That could TOTALLY happen to me!

The first Judy Blume books I read were handed to me by people like my mother, my teachers, and my librarians. But I have a very distinct memory of the first Judy Blume book that didn’t come from any of those sources. I was sitting in my sixth-grade classroom when a book was passed to me by one of my classmates. It was making its way around the room. There was a note on the book directing me to read several dog-eared pages, which I did, and … hoo-boy. I had no context for anything that happened before or after that scene, but all I knew was that it was about a boy and a girl having a conversation, and he was telling her about someone called Ralph. You see, he called “it” Ralph. And I’m pretty sure that some other things happened on those dog-eared pages (maybe even sex), but my sixth-grade brain just latched on to the Ralph thing and kind of short-circuited. I don’t remember if I realized what book I was reading, or even if I knew who wrote it, but my brain was primed for yet another milestone by reading just those few pages of Forever by Judy Blume.

By the way, for the next few months, my classmates and I found any mentions of the name Ralph to be HILARIOUS.

When I was in my twenties, I became a young adult librarian trainee with The New York Public Library, working at the Belmont branch in the “Little Italy” section of the Bronx. I was learning about old and new YA literature in classes I was taking to earn my MLS degree as well as by browsing the shelves when I was at work. I was also learning that Judy Blume was still a popular author, but that her books were often banned or challenged because of their “controversial” content. That’s when I started to realize that I was lucky that my mother (who had been a librarian trainee herself, back in the day) had put those first Judy Blume books into my hands.

One day when I was edging the shelves I discovered a copy of Forever hidden behind a row of books in the Italian Heritage section, and as soon as I saw the book I started laughing. My thought process went something like this:

• OMG, this is that book that was being passed around in sixth grade!
• Wow! Kids are still reading this book, and still hiding this book!
• Wait a minute … I never actually read the whole thing, just those few pages!
• Hey, I’m a young adult librarian now, so I could read this book FOR WORK!

And so, my long-overdue reading of Forever became my project for the afternoon, and I finally learned about those characters and their motivations. Oh, and that whole Ralph thing? STILL pretty hilarious!

It’s been a fun but sometimes surreal experience for me to go back and re-read some of Judy Blume’s books aimed at kids and teens. I belong to a YA book club that usually reads modern books, but several months ago we decided to go back and read some classic Judy Blume books instead. We decided that we would all read Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (a rare book because it had a male protagonist) as well as one book of our choosing. I chose Deenie as my second book, because I remembered it being such a formative book from my childhood.

It turns out that I had absolutely no memory of Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. Maybe that means I didn’t read it, or maybe that means that I did read it but it didn’t lodge in my brain like some of her other books. I did remember Deenie, though. Except … it turns out that I kind of didn’t. That’s the surreal part.

I think that when I read these books when I was a kid, my mind fixated on the stuff I wanted to know (what it would be like to make out with a boy) and tried to shut out the things I didn’t want to think about (what it would be like to live with scoliosis). I think I zoomed in on some scenes and studied them like they were the Zapruder film, letting everything else fade into the background. Reading this book again as an adult, I realized that the make-out scene wasn’t as long or as detailed as I remembered but that all of the scoliosis discussion was pretty gruesome. In fact, re-reading that book brought back memories of how I was scared of getting scoliosis when I was a kid, and how I used to open the closet and stare at my father’s old back brace (he’d had problems with some of his discs) and worry about how I might have to wear something like that one day. So it turns out that even though I tried to focus only on my favorite parts, the entire book got through to me, anyway.

Judy Blume’s literary legacy reaches far and wide. Since she wrote books for many age groups over the course of several decades, many readers encountered her at different stages of their lives. I know that at the same time that I was reading Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and other chapter books aimed at children, my mother had a copy of Wifey at home that was clearly written for an adult audience. And many people who read Judy Blume books when they were young grew up to read In the Unlikely Event, her book for adults that came out in 2015.

I’ve spoken to several of my colleagues asking them about their memories of Judy Blume. Some of them fondly remembered certain books from when they were kids (Freckle Juice, Superfudge, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing were top contenders). Some of them thought that some of her books aged better than others. And some of them remembered that they weren’t allowed to read Judy Blume books when they were kids.

You can still find Judy Blume books all over the public library, in the children’s, young adult, and adult sections. Her older books are products of their time, and some of the anachronisms have been adjusted through revised editions (Margaret no longer uses sanitary pads attached with safety pins, for example). But there are still some plot details in her older books that will make modern readers pause and think about how “real life” of the 1970s was different from the “real life” of today.

I don’t know if Judy Blume books will help everyone grow up, but they definitely helped me grow up. And one of the highlights of working with kids and teens in the public library is being able to put Judy Blume books into the hands of young readers and knowing that she is one of the authors who can help them get ready for their own milestones in life.

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.