The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us

Unlike Blume, Klein mostly found the whole thing amusing. In the summer of 1982, Publishers Weekly came out with a list of the most banned writers in America, which included Solzhenitsyn, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and D. H. Lawrence. “Judy Blume and I were the only women writers on the list, as well as the only authors of books for childr

Weeding is about unshelving titles that have been rendered irrelevant by the culture. Banning is about cutting off access to books that are contributing to current cultural conversations in the hopes that these conversations will stop.)

The answer, I’ve come to believe, is sex. Sex is the lifeblood that flows through her pages. Not selling sex for titillation’s sake, the way her critics claimed, but sex as a fundamental part of being human. From Margaret Simon’s obsession with getting her period to Deenie Fenner’s curiosity about masturbation, the children in Blume’s stories all e

(This is still a thing! Librarian Lauren Harrison said when elementary schoolers check Superfudge out of the library, she taps out a quick email to the parents warning them that “there’s a whole chapter that blows up Santa Claus.”)

Judy was paid $350 (roughly $2,800 today) for the book, and when the mailman—who had grown accustomed to delivering rejections—came by with the check, the pair danced across the lawn together.

evanescent

“Margo would never voluntarily live with such an angry, critical person. Never. But when it was your own child you had no choice.”

Critical Race Theory,

Lois Lenski,