I love Judy Blume. I love her with the same passion I love Paula Danziger and Cynthia Voigt. Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? and Blubber remain two of my all time favorite books, and I love gifting Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to young readers. For Pete’s sake, I had a crush on Peter, Fudge’s big brother, when I was about eight. He was my first book boyfriend. But…I didn’t love this book. In the winter of 1952, the small town of […]
Getting on an airplane soon? Maybe skip this one.
I’ve got a ton of nonfiction in a pile next to my bed but I decided I really needed some fiction to take the edge off my anxiety. This wasn’t the best choice. I mentioned this on Facebook and my friends wanted to know if I had fallen down and hit my head because why would I think a Judy Blume book would be calming? I tried to disprove them and then I remembered: Iggie’s House – racism Superfudge – dead turtle Blubber – Mean […]
Holding out for a hero…
Katie: Y’all, I want to give a shout out today to Patty for raising her Girl right. Being the great parent she is, Patty has gotten Girl started down the Judy Blume path. Being the great kid she is, Girl has some thoughts and feelings she’d like to share. Patty: Because PattyKates wasn’t enough of a departure, we’ve decided to do a review à trois with my daughter – who henceforth shall be referred to as Girl – being very careful to maintain a level […]
Airplane Crashes and Bobby Socks
The queen of YA writing has written another great novel for adults. Judy Blume’s In the Unlikely Event is the story of the town of Elizabeth, NJ, in the early 1950s after a series of successive plane crashes terrorized the suburb of Newark and changed the lives of Blume’s characters forever. Event’s main character is young Miri Ammerman, who lives with her mother, grandmother and uncle in a duplex close to Newark airport’s flight path. She is fifteen and just starting to glimpse adult life […]
A bit of a disappointing last book for Judy Blume.
Like most children born in the 1970s and 1980s (and I hope, the 1990s), Judy Blume books made frequent and prolonged appearances in my household. My personal favorites were always the Fudge books. I was (and still am) a lover of scatological and body humor, so Fudge eating his brother Peter’s turtle always appealed to me on a base level. And of course, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was there to ease me into puberty and ask all the awkward questions. I never got around to reading her […]
Judy Is My Queen
We all remember out first, right? Mine was Just As Long As We’re Together when I was 12 or 13. I remember being excited because we sang that song, Side by Side, in middle school chorus. Then was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, not too long after. Summer Sisters was my first “grown up” Judy Blume book, read on a beach vacation while I was in college. There is no one else that writes like Blume. There’s such realism and relate-ability in her novels. Her work is […]