Sublime

If Judy Blume was the Pied Piper, as the Christian Science Monitor wrote, then the Reagan administration and its champions were trying to barricade the gates to Hamelin. But they didn’t account for the fact that making a big show of locking her out only amplified her music.

BABETTE IS TALL and fairly ample; there is a girth and heft to her. Her hair is a fanatical blond mop, a particular tawny hue that used to be called dirty blond. If she were a petite woman, the hair would be too cute, too mischievous and contrived. Size gives her tousled aspect a certain seriousness. Ample women do not plan such things. They lack t