Blume-a-thon #26, #27, #28, & #29: The Pain & The Great One Chapter Books

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here This is it. This is it! I have now read the collected works of Judy Blume.

In a way, this feels like going back to the beginning. These are four little chapter books roughly at the same reading level as The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo. They are an expansion of  that Free to Be You & Me picture book, the Pain and the Great One.

All four of these books depict little childhood episodes: wolfman masks, getting lost in the mall (in New Jersey this is almost a rite of passage), dogsitting, failed birthday parties, mean cousins, and chasing boys around. What can I say? They're Judy Blume books. The kids are younger, the concerns more childish. Pitch-perfect for that stage of life.

I love that The Pain and the Great one was originally written for Free to Be You and Me. Because at heart, that's what all of this work is about. Being who you are. Seeing things from your own distinct point of view, but knowing there's another completely different way to see it. Knowing that life is hard on every side of the fence.

I expected that these books will be a silly little denouement from the more "serious" Judy Blume books. I expected to be disappointed that these were the end of my project.

But instead, I lay in bed, laughing a little and thinking, "yes. That's exactly how it felt."

Blume-a-thon #25: Double Fudge

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

Money: ugh. For a long time thinking about it was horrible. Other than those first few times I babysat and had the thrill of a cold, hard $3 per hour in my hand (yes, that was my rate, even in the spendy 90's), money has always seemed to me a taboo subject and an anxiety-builder. For a while, every dollar I had was a reminder of the ten dollars I didn't.

But some kids love money. They are fascinated by its symbolic value and very real power. Fudge is one such kid.

"Nice people don't talk about their money, especially in these times." Sheila gave me a look like my brother had no manners....

"I'm nice," Fudge said. "and I like to talk about money. You want to know how much I have?"

"No," Sheila told him. "It's nobody's business but yours."

He told her anyway. I knew he would. "I have fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents. I mise my money every night before I go to sleep."

Question for consideration: how does Judy have such a pitch-perfect ear for the way kids talk? I wonder if she is kept in touch with these perfect turns of phrase and attitudes and logic not only from her own kids, but from her fans that are constantly writing to her. Must be.

Like the last Fudge book, this one's just for fun. Long lost relatives. Uncle Feather. Discussions of "tightwads." It's a good time all around.

This is the last of the Fudge books-- Judy keeps insisting she won't write any more. But I'd be willing to bet my last dollar otherwise.

Blume-a-thon #24: Places I Never Meant to Be

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

This is not a book by Judy Blume, really. It's a collection of stories by censored writers, edited and introduced by Blume.

The stories themselves are good and you can see why censors would attack them-- arson, gay bath houses, use of the word "shitty"-- but the real treat here is Judy Blume's introduction. She discusses her own story of censorship and the one small moment when she succumbed to its pressures.

I saw that a few lines alluding to masturbation had been circled. My editor put down his pencil and faced me. "We want this book to reach as many readers as possible, don't we?"

Well, dammit. That's the thing. Pushed far enough, censorship not only removes materials from the public but also changes the writing. Writers want their books to be read. After too long being censored by libraries, and then by editors, writers might begin to censor themselves. To save a lot of heartache.

The reason we asked Judy Blume to come and speak at the Mark Twain House is because she is one of the most publicly attacked and censored writers of our lifetimes. Twain isn't around to defend Huck Finn, but Judy's here to defend Margaret. And she will. Again and again. This, above all, will be her legacy: not succumbing to these pressures. Standing up for those who have been forced to. And hopefully, inspiring other writers to put exactly what they mean into print.

Blume-a-thon #23: Summer Sisters

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here I LOVE this book. Maybe because I read it in the back of my parents' minivan when I was fifteen on the way to summer vacation, blushing.

This is the only book of Judy Blume's that covers many decades of one life (in this case, actually, two). It's about two girls who spend the summers together on Martha's Vineyard from 1977 through 1995. Caitlin and Vix have one of those incredibly intense friendships that seem like a crazy dream once they're over. Those friendships, in a way, can feel almost closer than a family bond. Someone has chosen you, plucked you from your ordinary life and brought you entirely into a magical land of adventures and romance.

I had a summer friend whose parents had a house next to a pond, right down the path from my grandparents. We weren't as close as the characters here but we had a tacit agreement to be friends during the time we were together. We hung out on the beach and wandered in the woods. We had dinner at each others' houses and hung around in our bathing suits.

That friendship began to unravel in a very specific moment. A new girl appeared on the block and we all lounged in the cold pond-water together. She was older than us-- clearly-- and skeptically asked our ages, deciding whether or no we were too young to entertain her. My summer friend immediately lied about her age. I remember looking at her, feeling betrayed. I was not a liar and I definitely wasn't sixteen yet, and couldn't even pretend. Sixteen was a faraway land where I had no business trespassing.

From that point on I didn't really spend much time with my friend any more. It was the classic drift-apart. Sometimes I'd see her through the trees headed down to the water. She wore bikinis now. I still wore one-pieces. That said it all.

I've had many friends like Caitlin, the free spirit in this book, wild and self-destructive. And I've had many like Vix, reserved and reasonable. I'm really neither. Probably, most women exist somewhere in between and enjoy seeing those two types hash it out.

Read this book as a teenager-- as I first did-- and it seems like a promise of a thrilling life. Read it as an adult-- as I just did-- and it seems like a memory.

Either way, it belongs on the beach, free from the responsibility of being "literature." It's a good story. That's all I need to know.

 

 

Blume-a-thon #22: Here's to You, Rachel Robinson

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here Let's talk about anxiety.

I like to think of myself as a laid-back person. Or at least, I was until the last couple of years. My mother can recount so many late-night school projects I'd left to the last minute, or huge messes in my room, or activities dropped because I just didn't feel like doing them any more. I stunk at clarinet and piano? No problem, I'd just sing in the choir. AP Bio conflicts with Drama in my schedule? I'll just take drama.

But, thinking back, a lot of my chilled-out attitude was actually related to an extreme perfectionism that I still have. I don't just want to do things. I prefer to do them well, and, if possible, be the best.

Rather than making me into a perfect person, this instead made me into kind of a crazy person. It created a little seed of anxiety that has grown into a shaky little tree that I still have wafting around in my chest today. It isn't as bad as some people's anxiety-- not at all-- and it isn't particularly easy to swat away sometimes. I'm guessing I fall right into the "average perfectionist" camp (a maddening phrase for any perfectionist).

Rachel Robinson is the same. She's nice. She's smart. She has good friends. But she has this unshakable sense of worry all the time.

As soon as I said it, I realized my mistake. Natural Helpers are supposed to listen carefully, not just to the spoken but to the unspoken. We're supposed to acknowledge feelings. But did I acknowledge Stephanie's feelings? No, I did not... I'm going to have to learn to be a better friend.

This is a nice moment of self-realization and growth, but it's also classic worrier. One little comment spirals into self-punishment and sweeping generalizations like "I'm a bad friend." I'm so with you, Rachel. How many times have I said that to myself?

Now that I've read almost all of Judy's books, I can confidently guess that Judy Blume herself is familiar with worry. This is probably the biggest thru-line of her work. Worry: who will I be? What am I doing wrong? What is going to happen to me?

I fight the impulse to worry so much, and to be the best at everything. Sometimes I give in. Rachel does both, too. For once, I wish I could reach back into the book and tell her: it'll be alright. Everything will be great, even if it isn't.

Blume-a-thon #21: Fudge-a-mania

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here More Fudge! So much Fudge! My teeth are aching from the sweetness and hilarity.

All of the Fudge books were written years and years apart. It had been seven years since Blume's last when she finally succumbed to a new novel about the Hatchers and their neighbor Sheila going on vacation together in Maine. As it happens, Maine is my family's vacation destination, too. Oh, Judy, growing up in New Jersey and going to all of my favorite places! Thank you for writing about my very life.

This book is just fun. Oil of ole, a grandparents' romance, baseball games, and other shenanigans. It's a little chaotic with all of these great characters-- Peter, Fudge, baby Tootsie, their parents, Sheila, her sister Libby, their parents, the grandparents, dogs, and a baseball star-- but I think that's a good thing.

"You're all maniacs!" Libby shouted.

"Fudge-a-maniacs," I added.

Either Libby didn't get my joke or she decided to ignore it. Because she said, "This is all your fault, Peter! Chaos follows you and your family."

"Chaos," I said. "I don't believe I know him."

So, for a really book-report-y ending to this blog post: if you like overcrowded summer cabins with too many overjoyed people and lots of shouting (which I adore), you will like this book. It seems to linger longer than its 146 big-print pages. It's a long weekend just for fun. We all need one of those once in a while.

 

Blume-a-thon #20: Just as Long as We're Together

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here When I was about twelve, a friend and I grew apart in a major way. Even though we'd been close since kindergarten, the stresses of middle school and the fact that we were both sort of lame grew between us. We began to fight a lot, mostly because we wanted to be friends with cooler girls. Of course, it was completely possible that we could have undergone this journey to coolness together, but it seemed somehow easier to tear each other down in order to avoid last place in the popularity race. It was a painful and sad time, and very confusing. I felt like no one else could see the world from my point of view.

Around this time, this girl shared Just as Long As We're Together with me. The story of two friends who must navigate new waters in their relationship when a new friend comes to town, this book, of all of Judy Blume's, changed my mindset the most. It's a really simple story about a group of three girls-- one funny, one stressed, and one new and sort of weird-- sensitive to the shifting nature of any trio.

I wonder what Allison will say when I tell her Rachel and I are speaking again, that maybe we are even friends. Probably she'll be glad.

Female friendships (perhaps any friendships) are like tectonic plates. There are so many little movements imperceptible to the naked eye, and then all of a sudden you've got a chasm in the earth or a stunning mountain. Not much happens in this book-- Steph and Allison have classes together and Rachel has a different schedule; different seating arrangements on the bus are attempted; sleepovers are arranged. And then all of a sudden characters aren't speaking. And then they are.

This was my experience, too. The weight of a thousand little comments added up to something. I wish they hadn't. I wish they'd vanished into thin air the moment they were spoken. I wish I had seen better how my friend's anxieties were related to her own becoming; I wish I had eased them.

But among the passed notes and locked diaries, there were some books that came from far away and held out one small plea: here's how it feels.

Stephanie's story felt like mine. And soon after, I read the sequel-- and that felt like my friend.

We are still close friends to this day.

Blume-a-thon #19: Letters to Judy

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here I have never written a fan letter. I did, once, write to the advice column Dear Sugar, after getting caught up in the beautiful writing of that column and desperately wanting her to speak to me directly. I don't even remember what I asked. I just remember that I wanted to be spoken to.

Letters to Judy is, I think, Blume's most important book. Here's the story.

By the 1980's, Judy Blume was internationally famous and heavily censored. She received thousands of fan letters. Most authors, I imagine, would be overwhelmed by that and stop reading them, or have someone else read them. Some very kind authors would write back. A select few might even write a book to address the kids directly.

Judy did these things, but she did something else that I think is even better: she collected them and addressed the book to parents.

Here, she is saying. Here is what your children are thinking about. They have confided in me. Here is what you need to know.

She writes in her introduction: Sometimes I become more emotionally involved in their lives than I should. There are letters that tear me apart, and they will you, too. 

They do. There are letters about family violence, there are letters about love. They are all short and sweet and lovely and horrible at the same time.

This book is also the closest we may ever get to a Judy Blume biography. In her answers to the kids and their parents, Judy talks about her parents, who wouldn't talk about sexuality with her, a summer friend who left her behind for the popular crowd, bedwetting, bullying, you name it.

Once again she passes information and reassures her readers. That's her usual MO. But this time, it's for the parents.

This book is sadly out of print now. You can get it online, or perhaps stumble upon it in a used bookstore. I imagine that if I were a parent I would seek it out one way or another. It's easy to forget how we thought as children. Luckily, Judy's got a whole archive of experience just waiting to be researched.

 

Blume-a-thon #18: Smart Women

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

Confession: up until this point I plowed through 1-2 Judy Blume books a day. Then, I read Smart Women. It took me a week.
At first I felt like it was kind of a slog. Familiar territory. Once again, we have adult women. We have a steamy hot tub scene with a naked guy right off the bat. The women-- two main characters, both divorced-- seemed overly muddled and needy to me. I'd rather read Wifey again.
But then: enter the teenage girls, the other two narrators of the story.
Remember a few posts back when I said I loved the adult stories peeking out of the corners of Blume's children's books? This book mashes together all three of Judy's best demographics: a pre-teen. A full-fledged teenage girl. And two adult women.
So Sara knew that the crisis had to do with her father. She called Jennifer for advice, but Jennifer told her to just stay out of it. That parents have to learn to solve their own problems.
Sara doesn't get a lot of narration time in this book, but she's the one who illuminates just how unlikeable her mother B.B. is (who has a breakdown and largely ignores her daughter for the duration of the book). I love you, Sara. I'd read more books about you. And Michelle-- you and your first love, too.
But of the three of Judy's adult books, this one is the weakest. I mean, there's no comparison with Summer Sisters. But we'll get to that in due time...
Just found this opening paragraph from People in 1983. So Judy. So Smart Women. Were the 80's as ridiculous as they seemed?
If Judy Blume were the protagonist of a novel, she'd be pretty hard to stomach. Rich, famous and fresh-faced at 46, she has two stylish abodes, a devoted lover, a pair of grown children who actually like her and a new book, Smart Women (Putnam, $15.95), on the best-seller list. She knows how to tap-dance, get a good table in a crowded restaurant and inspire loyalty among millions of readers. Add to that the fact that she's a genuinely nice person, and Blume's story would seem to have all the dramatic tension of The Joy of Cooking.

Blume-a-thon #17: The Judy Blume Diary

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

Hey, guess what-- this isn't a book at all. I ordered it online, and had trouble finding a copy in "very good" or "like new" condition, and when it arrived from St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Walnut Creek, California, I found out why there are no "like new" copies of this book.
It's a diary. With an awesome picture of a hip Judy Blume standing in front of a wind machine on the back.
On the front cover of my copy, a kid has written: "My Potassium Diary." OK. Kid, if you're out there, please find me. Explain.
Is it a potassium diary because it's so wholesome? Judy writes in an intro:
The idea from this diary comes from my readers, who often say, I have no one to talk to-- no one to tell what I am really thinking and feeling. Sometimes, just writing down your feeling makes them easier to understand. 
This diary came out in 1981, the same year as Tiger Eyes, and not long after Judy Blume and censorship became almost synonymous.
You will find a quote from one of my books on every page of this diary, and each month there will be three photographs. These words and pictures may remind you of how you sometimes feel. You can write about that, or your family, or your friends, your happy times and your sad times.
When I was a kid I kept all sorts of diaries. I mostly wrote about my friends. As I got older I tried to be more of a "writer," putting in flowery language and making what I considered to be deep observations. I still have a lot of diaries. I guess I'll just add this one to the collection.
I love that Judy acknowledges the variety of feelings that kids have. All are valid to her, always. The petty jealousies of friends. Grief and pesky little brothers exisiting on the same page.
By this time she was a brand. She was famous. Kids were reaching out to her. And she was reaching back.
And yes, that's a picture of a turkey sitting on a football. I'm not quite sure what deep emotions I'm supposed to feel about that. Perhaps just delight.

Blume-a-thon #16: Tiger Eyes

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

How had I never even heard of this book until this read-a-thon?
Tiger Eyes is amazing. It's a portrait of a family in grief, making a break for a new city in the wake of a father's death.
On the night that my father was killed, after the police and the neighbors had left, Jason and I got into bed with Mom. We'd left a light on in every room. The house was very quiet and I thought about how strange it is that sometimes quiet can be comforting, while other times, it becomes frightening. 
"What's it like to be dead?" Jason asked Mom.
"Peaceful," Mom said. 
"How do you know?" Jason said. 
"I don't really," Mom said."
It would be very easy to criticize this book for being overdramatic, for going for the easy emotions, if it weren't so well-written. More than one person dies in this book, and one of the deaths is sort of a tear-jerker. As a kid I read a few books about girls dying nobly of cancer, and I hated them. They seemed too manipulative, even for a sap like me.
How is it that Judy Blume nails ordinary experience every time? At the funeral, Davey is distracted by sweat pooling in her bra. In her new town, she's extremely anxious about fitting in, despite the fact that her father has just been killed. As humans tend to be, she is preoccupied by ordinary human things. She does not cry much.
I particularly like this book because of the symbolic weight it allows itself to carry. (Not a normal Blume trait.) There's the canyon that Davey stupidly hikes into without preparation. There's the atom bomb industry that dictates the lives of everyone in town. There's the non-urban, non-East-Coast setting-- refreshing after so many books that take place in New Jersey. Everything speaks to the alienation, the otherworldliness of grief. The total devastation. Davey may as well be on the moon.
Judy's son Larry (the inspiration for Fudge, and now a grown man and film director) will be making Tiger Eyes into a movie this year. I hope very much that it is awesome. I think it could be. I can't wait to see it.

Blume-a-thon #15: Superfudge

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

In which Fudge becomes a middle child. In retrospect-- the kid he was always meant to be. Weird. Grabby for attention. Ridiculous. (I dedicate this paragraph to my wonderful middle-child brother Alex, who himself was pretty silly as a kid, but has turned out to be a smart and respectable and very quiet adult.) (Why am I dedicating paragraphs? Too much Judy Blume?)
Blume's comedic touch is perfect in this book:
Before the end of the week, Fudge asked the big question. "How did the baby get inside you, Mommy?" So Mom borrowed my copy of How Babies Are Made, and she read it to Fudge.
As soon as he had the facts straight, he was telling anybody and everybody exactly how Mom and Dad had made the baby. He told Henry, our elevator operator. Henry smiled and said, "That's a mouthful for a small fry like you."
I'm not a parent, but I imagine that reading these books to your own kids must be hilarious. There are these innuendos, of course, and a take-down of modern art, and a small and lovely scene where the two boys acknowledge that they only pretend to believe in Santa for their parents' sake. (Judy Blume has been censored many times for her taboo topics, but parents were in an uproar that she also "ruined Christmas" with this revelation.)
I also love the hidden adult plot in the novel: Mr. Hatcher quits his job at the advertising agency in order to move to the suburbs, find himself, become a man who loves the outdoors and old houses, and most importantly, write his big novel. In the margins of the tales of his kids, we see Mr. Hatcher flail and ultimately fail.
This is a weird thing to say, but what I've come to love about Judy Blume is the way she writes adults within children's books. These are not children's stories-- these are family stories told from the kids' point of view. When I was Peter's age, I was trying hard to figure out who my parents were. Everything they did seemed to be a secret I needed to figure out. Maybe I wouldn't have seen Mr. Hatcher in this book when I was a kid, but I see him now. And I want to give him a hug.

Blume-a-thon #14: Wifey

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here Wifey, Judy Blume's first book, begins with a man masturbating on our heroine's front lawn.

Sandy dropped to her knees, barely peeking out the window, afraid, but fascinated, not just by the act itself, but by the style. So fast, so hard! Didn't it hurt, handling it that way? She'd always been so careful with Norman's, scared she might damage it.

Oh, my!

There are many shocking things in this book, even for a wizened old adult reader such as myself. Affairs. Swinging. Diaphragms (the exact use of which seem just as dated as the menstruation belts in Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret-- they come in sizes? Was this a source of anxiety for women at the time, the size of your diaphragm? Someone please answer this for me.). Old flames. Gonorrhea.

But the most shocking and most delightful thing about this book is the fact that it is the first of Judy Blume's adult novels, and tons-- I mean tons-- of kids must have read it entirely by accident. I've already found two people in my office for whom that is the case. Published in 1978, teenagers must have gotten a fascinating eyeful then (and I'm sure this still happens today, from my experience with Summer Sisters and what those innocent beach chairs on the cover represented). There was backlash. Oh, was there backlash. Many said her career would be over and chastised her for not using a pseudonym.  Won't someone think of the children!

From what I can tell, Judy Blume did not give anything resembling a shit.  Just when the world got used to her dealing with complex topics for kids, she goes ahead and tackles a terrible marriage and infidelity. Unsurprisingly, this book is morally ambiguous to the core. I don't mean that Sandy, the heroine, has no morals-- I mean it is largely unclear what is right and wrong here. Her husband, Norman, treats her like a trophy wife (sorry, "Wifey," just as condescending as it sounds) and any feminist worth her diaphragm (yes? no? Someone help me here) would cheer for the epic divorce scene that never comes. Instead we are left with a weird marraige with improved communication. I found it both realistic and deeply depressing.

Judy Blume herself was married three times. She says in her 2004 introduction: "I was never married to Norman but I knew plenty of guys like him." In the end, Norman doesn't matter-- Sandy does. And while we're saddened to know that maybe Sandy stays in that marriage forever, we at least know that in 1975 Judy Blume struck out for a new life of her own. I believe I will be too afraid to ask her about this in my interview, but maybe I can get the gumption.

She says in her introduction: When I look at the book today, I can't believe how fearless I was in my writing. I mean, all those sexual fantasies and escapades! Maybe I just didn't know enough then to be worried. Maybe I really didn't care what anyone thought. 

May we all be so brave as to break out of the boxes that made us famous, Judy, may we all be so brave.

Blume-a-thon #13: Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here Sally J. Freedman sees Hitler. She sees him sitting on benches in her new neighborhood. She sees him talking with a friend. She writes letters to the police about him.

Dear Chief of Police,

You don't know me but I am a detective from New Jersey. I have uncovered a very interesting case down here. I have discovered that Adolf Hitler is alive and has come to Miami Beach to retire. He is pretending to be an old Jewish man.

Sally also is the director and star of self-written plays about alternate endings to her family's Holocaust story.

- I ran and ran and I've been running ever since... but not any more... I'm too tired.... too tired to run...

- It's all over now, Sally tells Lila. You're safe. I'm taking you home with me. You can share my room. My father will make you new teeth. He's a very good dentist. 

- How can I ever thank you? Lila asks.

- Don't even try... I'm just doing my job.

.... When they get home, Sally is a hero. There is a big parade in her honor on Broad Street and everyone cheers. The people watching from the windows in the office buildings throw confetti, the way Sally did when Admiral Halsey came home at the end of the war. 

This novel, which takes place in 1947, is at once the most autobiographical and the most tonally complex of Judy's books. It has the same uproarious voice of Sheila the Great, and on the surface makes light work of the horrors of World War II and its effect on the psychology of children.

But, being a Judy Blume book, it isn't really light. Its premise is so strong that I can't believe it had never occurred to me before: in the forties, for a nine-year-old Jewish kid, three things were at hand. A supervillan with a strange and confusing death; faraway families members of mysterious and almost exotic stories and dangers; and the ever-growing popularity of the movies. For a kid with any sort of imagination (so, every kid), this must have been a recipe for fantasizing of the darkest order.

Of course kids will fantasize about capturing Hitler. Of course they will go back in time and cross continents and rescue relatives they've never met, relatives who they've only heard of as beautiful and tragic figures. That's what kids do, and that's what children's literature does: it endows children with power. In this case, the author does not fantasize for the child. Sally is no Harry Potter and no Lucy in Narnia. Blume shows us her fantasy, and shows us older kids, other kids, adults-- rooted very much in the pain and healing of the real world-- trying to pull her through a normal fifth grade year.

Everything turns out fine for Sally, of course. She has a mother and father and brother who love her. In many ways this reads like any other Judy Blume book for pre-teens. But in another way, it's easy to love Sally's voice and hope that she gains the empathy her neighbors wish she had for the poor old Jewish man she has mistaken for Hitler.

We know she will find that empathy. We know she will, because that voice will grow into another voice who will write many, many books packed from page to page with empathy for kids everywhere.

Blume-a-thon #12: Forever

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here

I read this book in a bar, cover-to-cover, after work one afternoon. An acquaintance of mine walked in and said, "oh, hey, Judy Blume. One of my students brought in a book of hers for silent reading time and my principal pulled me aside and told me she really shouldn't be reading it. I think it was about sex."

"Had to be this one," I said, holding up Forever... (ellipses part of the title).

"We made love on the bathroom rug, but just when I was getting really excited, Michael came. I wondered if it would ever work out right between us."

Forever... is one of the most challenged Judy Blume books. At this point in her career, she'd only written books for children, and I'm certain that many kids and teenagers were shocked by the content they accidentally discovered in the pages of their favorite author's latest novel. A penis with a name, for instance. The slow and mature decision of our heroine, Katherine, to lose her virginity, read up on sexual health, and go on the pill. Shocking!

I recently recorded a podcast about the first in the Sweet Valley High series. Revisiting those books, I was struck (as no doubt you would be too) by their complete absurdity. There's nothing resembling real experience there, as much as I wanted my life to be that exciting when I was fifteen. Forever, on the other hand, burns not with lust but with familiarity. The ordinariness of teenage sexuality. The reason and logic of seventeen-year-olds. The self-righteous feeling of "I'm in love  and my friends don't understand since I'm an adult now." Oh, and also: "this is forever."

Any adult can see the writing on the wall, in those ominous ellipses. But I'd be willing to bet that a young teenager wouldn't. Everything seems like forever during that time-- or at least we want it to be. But of course it isn't. No matter how kind and sweet Michael is, and how reasoned and mature Katherine is, teenagers grow apart. That's as good a lesson as all of the other tidbits in this book.

I'm still friendly with my high school boyfriend, Dave. We rarely talk, but I like knowing that he's out there, happily married, taking a little bit of the love he practiced on me and giving it to someone much more deserving. It seems long ago that I believed anything would be forever. But you know what was? The feeling of giving myself entirely to another person, the joy of comforting another, of being always around for them, of the comfort of a physical touch. The knowledge that being an adult means making a vulnerable space within yourself, and that love is filling in other vulnerable spaces with good things instead of bad. That knowledge was forever.

Blume-a-thon #11: Blubber

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here When I was in elementary school I was largely left alone. Small and bookish, I was accepted mostly with indifference by my peers, who accepted me simply by their lack of rejection. I recall no schoolyard cruelties when I was very young. Only the squabbles with my close friends-- a completely different kind of childhood stress rooted in actually working out the differences in two personalities-- contributed to my social stress as a child.

But as I got a little older, it began to happen. In fifth grade a girl played a practical joke on me and laughed in my face in the lunchroom, and I sat silent as a whole new kind of tears rose up to my eyes, as if from my gut. I have no idea now if she was intentionally singling me out or if it could have been anyone, but the second I cried I took on my stance as a victim. I carried it through sixth grade and seventh grade, and then, desperate to keep my head above water, I started being a little bit mean to others. Not cruel. Exclusive. A follower. A silent witness to other people's meanness. I was a part of kicking a couple of girls off a 6-seat-only-lunch-table, and I will feel awful about it forever.

It didn't last long-- I raced back to good friends, nice friends, very quickly, and they helped me accept that I would never be cool but I could absolutely be nice. We sat at a lunch table so long there were always empty seats for those who'd been booted off the six-seaters. I was happy for this redemption but I always carried the knowledge of how to be mean inside me. Sometimes I still fight it off.

Not long after writing Deenie, a short novel about a girl struggling with her mother's bullying her into a modeling career, Judy Blume tackled a topic we're still wrestling with these days. The bullying in this 1974 classic-- well, actually, I don't know how widely read it is, but it should be a classic-- is focused on two girls: one who's overweight and one with eczema. The narrator, Jill, is neither of these girls. Nor is she the cruel Wendy or the number one lackey, Caroline. She's just one kid floating in a middle-school world. But the first line is:

"My best friend, Tracy Wu, says I'm really tough on people. She says she wonders sometimes how I can like her."

From here on we get all sorts of judgments from Jill. Donna's got a thing about horses. Robbie doesn't laugh like a normal person. But mostly, her classmates are mean to Linda, an overweight kid who has the unfortunate assignment of reporting on whale blubber.

The rest of the book is Jill's descent into being a passive bully. First she does nothing to help Linda. She laughs along with the others, she participates in small ways. I'm not going to ruin the book, because it is absolutely worth a read, but Jill descends very slowly and very surely from complicit to cruel before our eyes. It is realistic because it is barely perceptible, particularly to the adults around them.

To stop bullying, we have to stop the bullies. Not in their tracks, but in their creation. We have to move our children more swiftly to empathy and kindness. Any good book about bullying, any that will make our kids better, will likely be from the point of the bully. We must see how our own cruel tendencies can come out and how fast they can turn on us. We must see how being an adult means not that we are angelic, but that we work hard to be conscious of how we treat people around us. Sometimes we all have to be reminded.

Blume-a-Thon #10: The Pain and the Great One

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here Just when you thought that Judy Blume was the master of young adult lit of the 70's-- that that was her niche, her jam, her corner of the world-- she goes and decides to write a picture book, just for the fun of it, and prove that she can look at a child's life from any perspective she chooses.

Actually, the text of The Pain and the Great One was originally published as a poem in the book version of Free to Be You and Me (side note: if you don't know what this is, please do yourself a favor and watch parts of the TV special on youtube. It is a glorious piece of 70's love and understanding), and like the rest of that project, gives a big hug to the idea that we're all different and have different perspectives on the world.

The Pain and the Great One is based on Judy Blume's kids, Randy and Larry, and the idea is simple: the grass is always greener in the other sibling's world.  The Great One (older sister) thinks her brother is treated like the family favorite, the baby:

I don’t understand how Mom can say the Pain is lovable. She’s always kissing him, hugging him, and doing disgusting things like that. And Daddy says the Pain is just what they always wanted. YUCK! I think they love him better than me.

Likewise:

She thinks she’s great just because she can play the piano and you can tell the songs are real ones. But I like my songs better even if nobody ever heard them before. My sister thinks she’s so great just because she can work the can opener, which means she gets to feed the cat. Which means the cat likes her better than me just because she feeds her.

This is a short book, but a lovely one. Sometimes all it takes to remind us that our point of view on the world is a relativistic one is a children's book. Our lives seem wonderful to others. Let's all try to keep that in mind.

The pain and the great one will be back at the end of this read-a-thon, so stay tuned! I've come to like them very much. Fluzzy, too.

Blume-a-Thon #9: Deenie

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here "Deenie is my jam," said the most fun person I know, a local television producer in Connecticut. This was several months ago, when I told her that Judy Blume was coming to the Twain House this summer. I had never heard of Deenie. It seems that everyone who's read Judy Blume has a different favorite. And everything I heard about Deenie signified it would be a Big Blume Book: scoliosis, back brace, masturbation.

I seemed to have entirely missed the teen-trauma set of Judy's books-- divorce, scoliosis (Deenie), and the upcoming novels on bullying, grief, and virginity. I was clearly into the "regular-girl" books about the stresses of female friendship, and the humor of the Fudge series. So I was wary, digging into Deenie, that it would be a cheeseball experience in the vein of Lowis Lowry. (Her characters always died of leukemia, as I recall. As a youth I found this manipulative.)

I don't know what I was worried about. Deenie's major issue is not scoliosis: it's that her mother is constantly reinforcing her expectation that she will be "the beauty" of the family while her sister will be "the brains." The scoliosis plot twist isn't used as a "woe-is-me-I'm-a-voctim" device; instead, Deenie's back brace is instead a physical tool to help her deal with and stand up to her mother's expectations.

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The brace looks like the one Dr. Kliner showed us three weeks later. It's the ugliest thing I ever saw.

I'm going to take it off as soon as I get home. I swear, I won't wear it. And nobody can make me. Not ever!...I had to fight to keep from crying.

Just when I thought I was going to be okay Ma started. "Oh, my God!" she cried. "What did we ever do to deserve this?" She buried her face in a tissue and made sobbing noises that really got me sore. The louder she cried the madder I got until I shouted, "Just stop it, Ma! Will you just stop it please!"

Dr. Kliner said, "You know, Mrs. Fenner, you're making this very hard on your daughter."

It's rare for a Blume parent to be entirely unsympathetic, but Deenie's mom is. I'd find it unrealistic, but then my memory snaps back to a friend's mom saying things like "if you burp in public, how will you ever get a boyfriend?" These moms are out there.

As a girl who fell much more on the "brains" side of this dichotomy, I was pleased to see brainy old Helen standing up for herself late in the novel.

"Oh Ma...you're impossible! God didn't give me a special brain. You made that up. And you almost convinced me, Ma...you almost did.... I used to tell myself it didn't matter if I wasn't pretty like Deenie because I have a special brain and Deenie's is just ordinary....but that didn't help Ma....it didn't help at all....because it's not true!"

Helen turned around and looked at me. Then she did the craziest thing. She ran to me and hugged me and cried into my shoulder. "It's not your fault, Deenie...don't let them make you believe that...it's really not your fault."

I started crying too. Helen doesn't hate me, I thought. She should, but she doesn't. We both cried so hard our noses ran but neither one of us let go of the other to get a tissue. And right through it all, Ma kept talking. "I wanted better for you," she said. "Better than what I had myself. That's what I've always planned for my girls...is that so wrong?"

I will close on this lovely observation from the website Jezebel-- a great website for Judy Blume fans who are all grown up:

"Deenie's not conceited, she's just passive—a very minor flaw that, as Blume knows, in the long run can have far more dire results than excessive self-regard (which, unfortunately, kinda works in one's favor). Ironically, it's Deenie's brace that frees her from the invisible brace her mother was setting up for her, an adolescence locked into a role that would have derailed her growth as a real person."

Another classic down the hatch. Oh, and the masturbation? Totally minor. Totally secondary to the bigger questions at hand. Totally ordinary. Just like it is in real life.

Blume-a-thon #8: Otherwise Known as Sheila The Great

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here I once went up to the top of the high dive at our public pool and refused to jump off. The lifeguard, probably a high schooler, tried to tell me I had to jump, but I didn't. I sat down on the board and scooted my way back off, then walked down the ladder. This was completely against the rules, but my fear of the height was greater than my fear of the lifeguards. Already soaking wet from the day of the pool, I skedaddled down to the side and make it seem like I'd already come out of the water from my big jump by the time my best friend surfaced from her jump. I didn't lie, per se, but I definitely did not say anything about being too scared to jump.

Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great is a great book. I'm going to go out on a limb here-- heights or no heights-- and say this one is my favorite so far. At this point in her writing life, Judy Blume had started to hit the comedy nail on the head. With Sheila, she finds the perfect balance between a comedic tone and the everyday fears of real kids.

Sheila is afraid of spiders, thunderstorms, swimming, and dogs-- but she still lives with the joy and boldness of any ten-year-old kid. She's all bravado, a completely unreliable narrator. If I had a kid who was afraid of things, I'd read them this. Actually, in the end, I am still a kid who's afraid of things. And actually, I have a significant amount of bravado as well. Recently I found myself jumping off a twenty-foot platform into a lake. When I got to the top I didn't want to do it. I turned to walk back down the ladder-- but the shame of not completely the jump was worse than the fear of just jumping. I stepped off. I jumped. I was still afraid. I hit the water. I lived.

Sheila does not overcome her fears by the end of the book. She has to deal with them over and over. She learns to swim just a little, she gets a puppy. She lives in the world with her fears. She takes tiny, tiny steps towards being less afraid. That's what we all do every day. Thanks, Judy, for pointing that out.

Blume-a-thon #7: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Judy Blume will be speaking at the University of Hartford on June 21st as a fundraiser for The Mark Twain House & Museum. I’ll be interviewing her onstage and taking tons of audience questions. In preparation, I will be reading her complete works and blogging about the experience. Get your tickets here I am an oldest sibling. Always quiet and rather, in my opinion, reasonable, I was sometimes blindsided by the mischievous energy of my brother and sister. My brother would hide in racks of clothing in the department stores; my sister punched my father's secretary in the face for calling her "cute."

Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is sincerely hilarious. Something about the deadpan delivery of poor old Peter Hatcher, eldest sibling just trying to live through another day in the company of the tyrannical Farley Drexel Hatcher (nickname: Fudge, age: four, occupation: casual anarchist).

I read this book as a kid (of the seven I've tackled so far, I've read five-- an even better track record than I expected), and while the classic turtle-swallowing scene stands out for pure shock value and tragedy, there were some other exchanges that had me laughing out loud this week.

"Yes, Dribble's a turtle. My turtle," I said in a soft voice.
"See.... see," Fudge whispered. 
"They can all see," I told Fudge. 
"Nice turtle," Sam said. 
I wondered why he wasn't afraid this time.
"What does Dribble do?" Jennie asked.
"He doesn't do anything special," I said. "He's a turtle. He does turtle things."
"Like what?" Jennie asked.
What was with this kid, anyway? "Well," I said, "he swims around a little and he sleeps on his rock and he eats."
"Does he make?" Jennie asked.
"Make?" I said.
"Make a tinkle?" "Oh, that. Well, sure. I guess so."
Jennie laughed. So did Sam and Fudge. 
"I make tinkles too. Want to see?" Jennie asked.
"No," I said.
Guess what happens next?
Having spent four or five summers as a camp counselor for kids age 3-5, I can assure you that this is exactly how things go wrong fast. You think you're having a normal conversation and WHAM: a kid is peeing in place. It happens more than you'd like to think.
There are so many great moments in this book: the return of "eat it or wear it," originally used as a punishment, late in the novel; serious statements like "I will never forget Friday, May tenth. It's the most important day of my life," from poor Peter; tidbits snuck in there for older siblings like "I got the message. It was like buying the shoes and like at Dr. Brown's office. They were going to use me to get Fudge to do what they wanted him to do. I wondered how anybody would ever manage my brother without my help." It all seems carefully and realistically constructed-- which is why I was shocked to read on Judy's website that she did not revise it at all.
I suspect these comic anecdotes, built up from her years as a mom to Randy and Larry, came pouring forth. There comes a time when you just have to laugh at (and with) your little kids. Otherwise, the insanity might get to you.