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

“There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.”

In the fall of 1980, Karen Fleshman was a sixth grader at Mary Blair Elementary School when she heard the news that her favorite author had sparked concern among community members and was at risk of being purged from the school library. Fleshman, then an eleven-year-old “voracious reader” with glasses, braces, and a short feathered blond haircut, w

Published in 1967, The Outsiders is widely considered to be the first young adult (YA) book. It

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.

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.)

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

evanescent

Eventually, by the late 1960s, she’d been rejected by every major publisher, from Harper & Row to Houghton Mifflin to Random House and Pantheon. But she had made progress, too. She sold a short story, called “The Flying Munchgins,” to a children’s magazine, about a little boy named Leonard who discovers a society of mysterious creatures—the Mun

Lois Lenski,