The Judy Blume story
This is the second in a series of annotated bibliographies I am putting together before the release of the Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023) movie and the documentary Forever Judy (2023). The first was a series of five Judy Blume books to read before you see the movie and documentary. This one is a bibliography of another five Judy books to get a glimpse into Judy’s biography. For a list of “Judy Blume books with good kissing scenes,” click here.
It’s difficult to know about the life of an author, especially one who is as globally famous and intergenerationally beloved by children, young people, and adults as Judy Blume. But it is possible to speculate about her real life by reading her books, sketching out a chronology, and then matching that chronology to the biographical note that accompanies her author’s photo, especially on first editions. To go even deeper you can go to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and read Judy’s archive of unpublished manuscripts, as well as documents related to both her fandom and censors. Or just turn her novels into maps and follow them out into the world. That works too.
I have purposefully listed these annotations to build a chronology of Judy’s life and have indicated which character(s) I think are most like the real Judy based on the criteria outlined above, but it is also important to remember that these notes are only academic speculation and that fiction isn’t the same as real life. Only the first and fourth books on this list, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1978) and Tiger Eyes (1981) were written for young readers.
Blume, Judy. 1977. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself.
Sally Freedman unexpectedly and temporarily has to move in the late fall of 1947 from Elizabeth, New Jersey to Miami Beach, Florida, just weeks after starting fifth grade. The whole reason for the move is so her brother, Douglas, can better recuperate from nephritis, and at first, Sally is a little scared and annoyed about having to leave her father and house and friends behind to live with her mother and maternal grandmother and brother in an apartment complex mostly populated by other winter people from the northeast, like her family. But within days she realizes that Florida is a strange and exciting new world where Black, Indigenous, and Spanish-speaking people make their home, Esther Williams-level movie stardom is possible and, Sally is convinced, Adolph Hilter is in hiding, shamelessly living under the alias of Mr. Zavodsky, a kind old Jewish retiree, whom Sally plots to report to the FBI as soon as she has gathered enough evidence. Written in the third person, Judy says that Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself is based on her childhood and that she is Sally. It was written when Judy was in her late 30s and already a global writing sensation with readers very interested in her biography. For other Judy Blume books written in the third person see my annotations on Iggie’s House (1974) and Blubber (1970) here. For extended recaps of Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1977), as well as dramatic readings of this novel 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. For archival evidence that Judy is Sally, see and listen to Alicia Zuckerman’s 2015 NPR report here for photos, maps, and addresses.
Blume, Judy. 2015. In The Unlikely Event.
Miri Ammerman’s mom, Rusty, and her best friend Natalie Osner’s dad, Arthur, fall in love and uproot Miri to Las Vegas from Elizabeth, New Jersey in the summer of 1952, after witnessing three major airplane crashes in the space of three months, the second of which not only kills the pilot and passengers but also residents of Elizabeth living on the ground. Around the time of the first plane crash, Miri is writing for her school newspaper and Natalie is taking advanced dance classes in New York City, singularly focused on becoming a star. But by the third crash, Miri has gotten in trouble with the school principal for writing a scathing editorial about the incompetence of adults dealing with the three airline crashes and Natalie is sure that a talented, up-and-coming tap dancer killed in one of the crashes is living inside her. Written in the third person from multiple points of view, Judy says that In The Unlikely Event is based on her memories of growing up in Elizabeth during the three real-life plane crashes that anchor the book. You can hear her in the chapters titled to indicate Miri and Rusty’s points of view. But it is Natalie, whom we never hear from personally and who in adulthood becomes a successful and glamorous writer and social influencer, who is the narrative incarnation of Sally Freedman all grown up, as well as most like the real-life Judy. Special note to Judy: Please write a book about Arthur Osner’s extremely feminist and well-read assistant Daisy Dupree. We need it.
Blume, Judy. 1978. Wifey.
Sandy Pressman, has a secret affair with her sexy and romantic ex-boyfriend Shep Resnick in the summer of 1970, the first summer her kids are away at sleep-away camp and just weeks before a major move into a new house. Encouraged by her mother and older sister Myra to break up with Shep and marry the more suitable Norman Pressman twelve years before, Sandy’s imagination, sex drive, and politics don’t match up with the sporty and super conformist Norman, who seems happy, on the surface at least, to take over his father’s dry cleaning business and settle into middle-age. Written in the third person, Wifey (1978) can be read as a novel about the culture of wealth among third-generation Jewish Americans in the late 1960s. Winnie Barringer’s parents, from Judy’s 1970 novel for young readers, Iggie’s House, could easily be friends of the Pressmans, given all the country club chatter about Blacks moving into the area and bringing all the property values down. But Judy says that Wifey (1978) is a novel about the wife and mother she was expected to become as a good girl from a good family, who got married just before the sexual revolution took place. For extended recaps of Wifey (1978), as well as dramatic readings of this novel with music and soundscapes, listen to the multi-episode arcs released in 2018 by The Blume Saloon podcast, produced and narrated by Alison Michaels and Jody Worthington. Special note to Judy: Please write a book about Norman’s fun and earthy former girlfriend Brenda Partington Yvlenski. We need it. (This is an unpopular opinion, I know, but I wouldn’t mind a book about Norman either).
Blume, Judy. 1981. Tiger Eyes.
Davey Wexler, along with her mom and little brother, moves in with her Aunt Bitsy and Uncle Walter, after she witnesses her dad being shot and killed, the August just before she is to start high school. It’s a big change since Davey’s parents were young and in love and raised her and her brother over a 7–11 store that they owned and operated near the beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And Aunt Bitsy and Uncle Walter were older and more reserved and somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, having immersed themselves in the life and work of the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico. But Davey slowly starts to overcome her grief and come back to the person she was before her father’s death with the help of a new friend, a slightly older boy named Wolf Ortiz, whom Davey meets by chance one-day hiking and who is carrying with him his own sorrow, having dropped out of college to care for his dying father. Written in the first person from Davey’s perspective, Davey is the most self-possessed character Judy has ever created. She is also the coolest. Chloe Sevigny said that when she was a teenager she aspired to dress like Davey. Judy says she wrote Tiger Eyes (1981) to better understand her own father’s sudden death when she was 21 and set the book in the town she moved to with her high school-aged children after her first divorce and second marriage in the late 1970s. For a truly excellent cinematic take on Tiger Eyes (1981) written by Judy and her son, Lawrence Blume, who also directed the film, you can learn more about the film here. I wrote a quick book-to-movie comparison here just after the film’s release in theaters eleven years ago. For other Judy Blume books written in the first person see my annotations for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970), Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1970) and It’s Not The End of the World (1972) here. For extended recaps of Tiger Eyes (1981), as well as dramatic readings of this novel 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. They also did a recap of the movie.
Blume, Judy. 1998. Summer Sisters.
Victoria Leonard, a poor kid, becomes acquainted with Caitlyn Sommers, a rich kid after they meet in 1977 in their sixth-grade class in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then, the two become friends and then best friends, after Caitlyn invites Victoria to spend the summer with her at her dad’s beach house on Martha’s Vineyard, clear across the country from Santa Fe. They end up spending five summers together before they drift apart, Victoria going off to study filmmaking at Harvard and Caitlyn traveling the world. But they keep getting pulled back into each other's lives because of a guy they both know from the Vineyard named Bru, whom Victoria had a five-year relationship with, and Caitlyn, a one-night stand, marriage, and baby. Victoria fully supports Caitlyn’s relationship with Bru, even though she also feels betrayed by it. But before she and Caitlyn are ever able to truly become friends again, Caitlyn divorces Bru and then mysteriously disappears, without any explanation to anyone, even to Victoria or her child. Written in the third person from multiple points of view, Summer Sisters is a novel not so much about its characters, but about a season and a place, summer on Martha’s Vineyard, and it can be read in sequence with Iggie’s House (1970) and Wifey (1978), as a trilogy on American prep culture. Judy says that the setting did come first. She wrote Summer Sisters (1998) about ten years after she started spending her summers there in 1983 when her yearly residence was still in Santa Fe, the other important setting in the book. And one of the characters, Victoria’s mother Tawny, ends up living in Key West, Florida, which is the place Judy would eventually settle into in 2004 and where you can travel to right now, today, to maybe see her in real life working at her bookstore. For extended recaps of Summer Sisters (1998), as well as dramatic readings of this novel with music and soundscapes, listen to the multi-episode arcs released in 2019 by The Blume Saloon podcast, produced and narrated by Alison Michaels and Jody Worthington. You can also buy a “Caitlyn and Bru, July 31, 1990” wedding t-shirt designed by The Blume Saloon here.