Judy Blume (1938- )

As Alice Phoebe Naylor and Carol Wintercorn, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB), put it, Blume "revolutionized realistic fiction for children." In the words of Oppenheimer, Blume "opened" the flood gates in children's fiction to candid discussions of the many problems children face today.
Her books are funny. Her narrators often speak directly to the reader, her characters communicate with one another realistically, and she leaves solutions up to her characters. Blume's books, some say, are about growing up and learning to make choices.

Her Life:

During her sophomore year in college, Blume fell in love with a lawyer, John Blume, and they were married in 1959. Blume was pregnant with her first child when she graduated from college, and her daughter Randy Lee was born in 1961. A son, Lawrence Andrew, followed two years later. Blume stayed at home to care for her husband and children, but she was not satisfied with this domestic role. She attempted to exercise her creativity in various ways. As John Neary explained in People, Blume tried to become a songwriter, and then she made banners for children's bedrooms. Next, she began to write.

The first stories and books Blume submitted to publishers were rejected, but Blume persisted. When she found a brochure from New York University offering a course on writing for children and teenagers, Blume enrolled. As part of her coursework, she wrote what would become her first published work, The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo, a picture book which features a second- grade child who laments his position between his older and younger siblings.

Blume's marriage to her first husband ended in 1975. She met a physicist, Thomas Kitchen, and married him in 1976. Along with Blume's children, they lived in London, England, and then Santa Fe, New Mexico.They divorced in 1979. In 1987 she married George Cooper, a law professor and writer.

Teachers, librarians, parents, and young readers were enchanted with Blume and her work. "Blume and her fans enjoy the quiet warmth of good communication. Many of today's children have found a source of learning in Judy Blume. . . . Her voice is clear to them. She tells them there is a time at which each person must decide things for him or herself. In that sense, she carries an ageless message about the sanctity of individual rights."

Blume herself was pleased that she had made young readers happy. "I knew intuitively what kids wanted to know," Blume told Neary in People in 1978, "because I remembered what I wanted to know. I think I write most about sexuality because it was uppermost in my mind when I was a kid: the need to know, and not knowing how to find out." "I have this gift, this memory," she explained to Sybil Steinberg in a Publishers Weekly interview. "I write about what I know is true of kids going through those same stages." She stated, "My responsibility to be honest with my readers is my strongest motivation."

She is the most widely read author of contemporary young people's fiction in the world, and her books have sold tens of millions of copies, been translated into Spanish and other languages, and made into movies, filmstrips, and the "Fudge" books were made into a Saturday morning television series. She still receives up to two thousand letters a month from young readers.

In 1996, the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association gave Blume the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults, awarded to an author for lifetime achievement in writing for teenagers. While "Judy Blume's willingness to recognize children's serious thoughts about sex, religion and class made her a figure of controversy 25 years ago," as Mark Oppenheimer commented in the New York Times Book Review, "Blume has become an icon."

Her Websites:

An Interview with Judy Blume

You Know It, We Know It, Judy Blume Rocks

Her Books:

is based on Blume's own experiences as an adolescent. The novel begins as Margaret Simon's family moves to suburban New Jersey; Margaret must make new friends, and she begins to worry about getting her period and wearing a bra. Margaret is also concerned about religion. Born to a non-practicing Christian mother and Jewish father, Margaret is not sure how she wants to worship. She talks to God, makes bargains with him, and visits houses of worship.
Judy Blume and her character Margaret Simon were the first to say out loud (and in a book even) that it is normal for girls to wonder when they are ever going to fill out their training bras. Puberty is a curious and annoying time. Girls' bodies begin to do freakish things--or, as in Margaret's case, they don't do freakish things nearly as fast as girls wish they would. Readers are often so relieved to discover that someone understands their body-angst that they miss one of the book's deeper explorations: a young person's relationship with God. Margaret has a very private relationship with God, and it's only after she moves to New Jersey and hangs out with a new friend that she discovers that it might be weird to talk to God without a priest or a rabbi to mediate. Margaret just wants to fit in! Who is God, and where is He when she needs Him?

Judy Blume's next book is about Vic. Like Margaret, Vic has just moved to a new town and is worried about the changes taking place in his body. His problems center around the way his family has changed since his father became wealthy, and his own uncontrollable erections. Vic also worries about wet dreams. Although it did not prove to be as popular as her Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Then Again, Maybe I Won't received similar criticism for its explicit treatment of sexuality.

Blume wrote It's Not the End of the World after her children asked her if she and her husband would ever divorce. Karen Newman, the book's twelve-year-old protagonist, learns to cope with her parents' separation and impending divorce.
Karen's world was ending. Her father had moved out of the house weeks before; now he was going to Las Vegas to get divorced and her mother was pleased! She had only a few days to get the two of them together in the same room. Maybe, if she could, they would just forget about the divorce. Then the Newman family could be its old self again -- maybe. But Karen knew something she didn't know last winter: that sometimes people who shouldn't be apart are impossible together.

Katherine meets Michael at a New Year's Eve party and falls in love. The couple's relationship progresses through various stages, and they have intercourse. Although Katherine believes that she and Michael will be together forever, when her parents send her away to camp she is attracted to another man and decides to end her relationship with Michael.
John Gough stated, "It is a major achievement that Blume presents the heroine as the one who takes the initiative, the one whose heart changes." He argued that the characters "are not cut-out stereotypes. They are changeable and human." He added that simple words and sentences and real-sounding dialogue is very effective, and at times very funny."

In a departure from Blume's other works, Tiger Eyes takes up issues of violence, grief, growth, and renewal. Davey's father is killed in his convenience store by robbers, and he dies in her arms. Gradually Davey comes to terms with her father's death and helps her mother cope as well. She also meets a young Hispanic college student, Wolf, and they slowly develop a nurturing relationship. Even if you're no longer 15, and even if you'd rather think about something else, Blume puts you inside that girl . . . at once achingly vulnerable, funny and tough." "Whether you are a teen or an adult. You will laugh with the girl Davie, and you will worry ." One reader said, "When I was finished reading the book, it wasn't finished with me."

Since she began her career in the early 1970s, thousands of children have written to Blume to ask her questions or to discuss feelings when they felt they could not communicate with their parents. Letters to Judy: What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You is a presentation of some of these heartfelt letters arranged by subject, from sex and drugs to mental illness and divorce. Blume comments on the letters, sometimes addressing her remarks to children and other times to adult parents or teachers.

is a heartfelt story of how our relationships with ourselves, friends and family members mold us and how our choices whether right or wrong, popular or not- shape our lives. With one question and one answer, two young girls lives intertwine and the lives of their loved ones or even not so loved ones have a lasting and meaningful impact. As the characters grow up they question their choices, judgements, each other and themselves.Readers can relate to Caitlin and Vix as if they know them. This book is the adult version of Judy Blume and asks those lingering questions that as teenagers we'd thought would be answered in our 20's or 30's. What is life about and when do we really become "adults" ?