Read some Judy Blume books

The movie version of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig is about to be released on April 28 and before that, a documentary on the author of this novel, Judy Blume Forever, directed by Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok starts streaming on Amazon Prime on April 21. If you don’t know why this is such a big deal and truly thrilling then you can use this annotated bibliography to get prepared. It’s a modified version of one I have been using since 1995 to teach Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) to undergraduates who have never heard of it before or may have only vaguely heard of it. I first read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in 1977, and consider it one of the luckiest breaks of my life to have been a girl Margaret’s age when the whole Judy Blume thing started. We all knew how much she mattered. It’s nice to see everyone else finally catching up.

I have purposefully listed these annotations in a way to make a first reading of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) last longer, as well as to point out Judy’s excellent work documenting 1970s American youth culture as thoroughly as an anthropology professor. All of the books on this list were written for young readers. For the next bibliography in this sequence, which includes some of Judy’s books for adults, click here. For a list of “Judy Blume books with good kissing scenes,” click here.

Blume, Judy. 1970. Iggie’s House.

Winnie Barringer recognizes her white privilege the summer before she starts sixth grade after her best friend Iggie moves to Tokyo with her family and an African American family from Detroit, the Garbers, move into Iggie’s house. Shocked and dismayed by her parents’ cold indifference to the racist attacks against the Garbers made by a socially powerful neighbor after they first move in, Winnie herself works through her own internalized racism, often through the letters she writes to Iggie. For example, when Winnie first meets the Garbers she advises them to tell people that they moved to Grove street from Africa as a way to appear more exotic and therefore more appealing to people who might otherwise be afraid to make friends. But later, she realizes how wrongheaded and insensitive her advice was after learning that the Garbers prefer the same brand of peanut butter as her own family and were therefore, regardless of race, much more like the residents of Grove street than not. Winnie possesses a cool preppy fashion sense, much like the character Alison Monceau in Judy’s Just As Long As We’re Together (1987), sporting a worn-out white cotton sailor hat over a mass of tangled hair and, for one memorable visit to her Aunt Myrna’s upscale pool club, an orange one piece with brass buttons. The childless Aunt Myrna picks up and drives Winnie to accompany her to her pool club every week during the summer in a sports car with the top down as if she is a character who has temporarily left Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus (1959) for a cameo in a kid’s book. Special note to Judy: Please write The Myrna Bates Story. We need it.

Blume, Judy. 1970. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Margaret Simon has an identity crisis after moving from New York to New Jersey in the summer of 1970, just six months before her twelfth birthday. The only child of a Christian mom and a Jewish dad, Margaret is hit with all the hassles of being the new kid in her new neighborhood and junior high, just as all the inevitable identity politics of late 20th-century American teenhood are heating up. Be aware that versions of this novel published before the 1990s have an important cultural reference to Margaret’s secret purchase of a pink sanitary napkin belt, which got excised in later editions and replaced with a reference to a secret purchase of adhesive-backed pads. In all versions, the brand of the pads is the perfectly named “Teenage Softies.” Also, be aware that contrary to the title of this book, Margaret’s true confidant in the novel is not so much the non-denominational God she chats to in her head, but rather, her paternal grandmother, Sylvia, who doesn’t approve of her granddaughter being raised in the suburbs, away from her and all the cultural eclecticism of the city. For more of Judy Blume’s ethnographic analysis of the New Jersey suburbs circa 1970, but with a grown-up narrator, see Wifey (1978). For extended recaps of both Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Wifey, as well as dramatic readings of these novels with music and soundscapes, listen to the multi-episode arcs released in 2017 by The Blume Saloon podcast, produced and narrated by Alison Michaels and Jody Worthington. You can also buy a “Pre-Teen Sensations” t-shirt designed by The Blume Saloon here. For a literary critique of this novel listen to Allie Hoff Kosick’s SSR podcast with Emma Gray, Episode 36. For an unintentional Canadian version of this novel, see Léa Pool’s film, Emporte-moi (1999), i.e., Set Me Free.

Blume, Judy. 1971. Then Again, Maybe I Won’t.

Tony Miglione becomes overwhelmed by stomach aches after moving from a working-class neighborhood in Jersey City to a wealthy one on Long Island in the summer of 1971, just weeks before his thirteenth birthday. The youngest son of a tight-knit, multi-generational Italian American family living in a two-family, one-bathroom home, Tony’s life abruptly changes after his electrician father sells one of his basement inventions to a big electronics company, joins the company as a senior executive, and then hits it big financially, seemingly overnight. His mom goes from working part-time selling fancy department store lingerie to full-time social climbing and hires a maid to cook for the family in place of Tony’s beloved maternal grandmother, who takes to her bedroom and rarely comes out. His older brother Ralph quits his job as a popular junior high school history teacher to go into business with Tony’s father, despite having no interest in electronics. And Tony himself becomes obsessed with his new neighbor Joel, an unrepentant shoplifter, and Joel’s gorgeous older sister, Lisa, who changes her clothes with the shades up, in clear view of Tony’s bedroom window every night. Then Again, Maybe I Won’t is written in the first person like Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, but unlike Margaret, who works out her confusion via a project on religion she does for her young, first-year teacher, Mr. Benedict, Tony enters talk therapy with an older, fatherly child psychiatrist, Dr. Fogel. For extended recaps of this novel, as well as dramatic readings of dialogue with music and soundscapes, listen to the multi-episode arcs released in 2017 by The Blume Saloon podcast, produced and narrated by Alison Michaels and Jody Worthington. For a literary critique of this novel, listen to Allie Hoff Kosick’s SSR podcast with Jen Calonita, Episode 133.

Blume, Judy. 1972. It’s Not The End of the World.

Karen Newman learns about her parents’ plan to divorce in the spring of 1972 when she is eleven after they tell her and her siblings that they are legally separating. The middle kid in a family of five and, according to Karen, not as good-looking as her older brother Jeff or as quirky as her younger sister Amy, Karen is so mindful about the quality of her life that she gives letter grades to her daily experiences each day in complimentary date book her dad gets from a local insurance company every year. At the urging of her paternal grandfather, Karen tries, after her dad first moves out, to figure out a way to get her parents back together. But she slowly abandons this plan after Jeff runs away from home for a few days and she sees that her parents can’t stop fighting, even in the middle of a family crisis. It’s Not the End of the World was published twenty-three years after Das Doppelte Lottchen (i.e., The Double Lottie) by Erich Kästner, arguably the first realist book for young readers about divorce, which Walt Disney used as source material for one of the first kid-friendly Hollywood movies about divorce, The Parent Trap (1961). But both Kästner’s book and the Disney movie have the estranged parents reuniting in the end and this isn’t the happy ending for Karen’s parents or Karen herself. After becoming friends with the worldly and well-read Val, the daughter of one of her dad’s new neighbors, Karen realizes that she is not only getting used to her parents’ separation but might even prefer them that way. And after Val introduces Karen to The Boys and Girls Book About Divorce, a now iconic psychoanalytic text written for children by Richard Gardner and first published in 1970, two years before It’s Not the End of the World is set, the book ends with Karen using her saved allowance to buy a copy. For extended recaps of this novel, as well as dramatic readings of dialogue with music and soundscapes, listen to the multi-episode arcs released in 2022 by The Blume Saloon podcast, produced and narrated by Alison Michaels and Jody Worthington.

Blume, Judy. 1974. Blubber.

Jill Brenner befriends a bully and then becomes bullied herself during the fall of her fifth-grade year while her Swiss nanny, Mrs. Sandmeier, is away for three weeks. Assigned to a different classroom than her best friend Tracy Wu in their public middle school in suburban Philadelphia, Jill becomes casual classroom friends with a girl named Wendy, only to find herself swept up in Wendy’s sometimes sadistic harassment of a fat classmate named Linda during lunchtime when there is no teacher around. After Wendy accuses Linda of tattling on Jill and Tracy for a Halloween prank gone wrong, Jill agrees to help Wendy lock Linda up in a supply closet and put her on trial, until Wendy denies Linda a lawyer and Jill stops Wendy, telling her she has gone too far. Then, in retaliation to Jill, Wendy befriends Linda and the two of them start viciously taunting Jill for only liking soft baby foods like peanut butter and Wendy refers to Jill’s best friend Tracy by a racial slur. But Wendy and Linda’s new alliance is superficial and fragile, so Wendy’s social power over Jill never really picks up any steam. Jill eventually befriends another girl in her class named Rochelle who refused to get involved with any of Wendy’s bullying. And Linda keeps to herself in a classroom of shifting alliances and cliques. For a literary critique of this novel, listen to Allie Hoff Kosick’s SSR podcast with guest Meg Cabot, Episode 234.