Okay.
"We're starting a new program in gym.
"Mrs. Rappoport asked us each to write down a question,
"especially anything we need to know about sex.
"'Well, ' Mrs. Rappoport said,
"'does anyone here know the word for stimulating our genitals?'
"It got very quiet in the gym.
"Then one girl spoke.
"'I think it's called masturbation.'
"'That's right, ' Mrs. Rappoport told us.
"'And it's not a word you should be afraid of.
"Let's all say it.'
"'Masturbation, ' we said together.
"I never knew there was a name for what I do.
"I just thought it was my own special, good feeling.
Now I wonder if all my friends do it, too."
Let's raise our hands if we masturbate, everybody.
(laughter)
Oh, Judy.
Uh, do you know who Judy Blume is?
- ALEX TREBEK: Carol. - Who is Judy Blume?
She is America's most popular writer of children's books.
If you've ever read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
or Blubber or Superfudge...
(audience cheering)
The one and only Judy Blume, everybody.
You've sold more than 80 million books...
REPORTER: Her 20 or so coming-of-age novels
often address sensitive issues.
- I feel like the Pied Piper. - (laughter)
MOLLY RINGWALD: Everything that I learned
about sex or thinking about sex or crushes,
I learned from Judy.
(gasps) Judy Blume! Oh, I own all your books.
TAYARI JONES: It was like a look into a secret world.
I felt like someone was being honest.
That's a gift. That's magic.
LENA DUNHAM: Judy's books speak about the unspeakable.
It's the reason that her books were so complicated for people.
She is called the most censored writer of children's books.
A book cannot harm a child.
AL ROKER: Any time I say your name, I have to say the whole name... Judy Blume.
- (both laugh) - That's what the kids call me.
- Do they really? - "Hey. Hey, Judy Blume."
♪ ♪
You know, I call it petting the books.
When I come in every morning, I go through it,
and I make sure that they're all lined up pretty.
How to cook with weed.
People love this section.
CALLER: Is Judy in the store?
She is.
Um, I would sneak by, I think, by 2:00.
Okay. Well, she's here now.
EMPLOYEE: Absolutely. See you soon.
JUDY: Okay.
- You live here? - Uh-huh.
- Me, too. - (chuckles)
I just have to tell you, your books ignited such a love of reading in me.
(crying): You just made such a huge impact on me.
- MAN: Are you Judy Blume? - JUDY: Hi.
- I am. - Oh, my God.
Those books were, like, my teenage years.
Fudge, Superfudge. All those books, man, we loved 'em.
That is awesome I got to meet Judy Blume. Thank you.
JUDY: When I started to write, I...
only identified with kids.
Not with adults.
In your books, you generally write in the first person
from the point of view of a young person... of a young girl, usually.
I have done that in many of my books.
Do you have a connection
with your own adolescence, with your own childhood?
Some adults forget their childhood.
Do you still have a connection?
Oh, yes. I have total recall.
- You have total recall? - I mean, it sounds silly, but I...
I have total recall from third grade on.
Everything.
You can remember incidents, specific incidents
- that happened to you in grammar school? - I...
I can put myself back there.
I know exactly how I felt.
I know what I was thinking. Yes.
I didn't grow up thinking, "I'm going to be a writer."
But I always had stories inside my head.
♪ ♪
I grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
I was seven years old when World War II ended in 1945.
(horn honks)
If you went to the movie theater, you saw newsreels.
I knew about this thing
that I really didn't understand.
My brother David was four years older than me.
My mother would tell us the war happened
very far away and it's not coming here and we're safe.
Did I believe that? I don't know.
I mean, I was a Jewish girl,
and this happened because you were a Jew.
I was an anxious child.
I felt adults kept secrets from the kids.
I hated those secrets.
I-I think I had to make up what those secrets were.
That fueled my imagination.
"'Let's play Love and Romance today, ' Alice said.
"'Let's play War instead, ' Sally suggested.
"'Oh, I'm sick of playing War, ' Alice said.
"'I always wind up being Hitler!'
"'Well, you can't expect me to be Hitler, ' Sally said.
"'I'm Jewish.'
"'But if you don't want to play War I have another idea...
"'We can play Concentration Camp instead.
And nobody has to be Hitler because he is away on business.'"
I created characters.
I like making up backstories for them.
I like knowing who they were.
Of course, they didn't exist, except in my imagination.
My mother was always reading.
She took me to the library every week when I was very, very small.
Madeline...
All these wonderful Madeline books.
My mother, she let me sit on the floor and pull books out
and look at them and sniff them.
I love to sniff books. I still do.
And my mother, who worried about everything... everything...
didn't seem to worry about what I was reading.
But we could never talk about anything.
I knew never to ask her personal questions.
I knew I wasn't gonna get an answer.
My father was the nurturer.
He cut the toenails.
He took our temperatures if we were sick.
I adored my father.
He tried to raise me to want an adventurous life
and to be adventurous and to take chances.
(lively chatter)
My father was the youngest of seven siblings.
None of the seven siblings lived to be 60.
I worried terribly that he would die young.
And I had to pray so hard with my little prayers
and make so many bargains with God to protect him.
What a burden to feel that you're this little kid and you have to...
it's up to you to keep your beloved father safe.
As I got older, I never really confided
the things that were deep down inside.
Well, how do you like it?
- There's only one word for it: terrific. - (chuckles)
JUDY: The '50s was just...
so much was about pretend.
Pretend we're happy when we're not.
Pretend everything is great when it isn't.
If there was one thing my mother said to me always, it was:
"Be a good girl, Judy."
JOANNE STERN: She was a good girl.
She was very cute, very pretty.
Had beautiful clothes.
She was very thin.
We met in the seventh grade.
There was a great group of girls in that class.
JUDY: We talked endlessly about everything,
and we're still best friends today.
Look at that.
This is Joanne and Judy and Mary.
Oh, my God, look how young we were.
- JUDY: So, in ninth grade... - MARY: Yes, Fred.
...we were both in love briefly with the same boy.
We used to talk on the phone after we went out with him
and say how many kisses, how many times.
Yes, that's what we did.
Yes. I mean, he got us hot at a very early age, I think.
- (laughs) - That's what I think. Me anyway.
I don't know about you, but...
'Cause I was such a fucking prude, I guess.
We were not that sweet, but we... nobody knew.
(both laugh)
JUDY: I was a good girl with a bad girl lurking just inside.
But I knew what was expected of me.
Go to college, get your degree in education
in case you ever need a job... God forbid you ever have to work...
and while you're in college
is when you have to find the boy you're going to marry.
♪ ♪
I went to NYU.
I did meet my husband
when I was a sophomore.
I didn't know who I was or what I wanted,
and he was already a lawyer.
I thought that was... (sighs) so exciting.
I mean, you know, I was marrying a grown-up.
And I was gonna be a grown-up, too.
I even bought a girdle to prove it. (chuckles)
A mint green girdle. Mm-hmm.
But we got married under
very difficult circumstances that changed my whole life.
My father had a sudden, massive heart attack,
and he died.
I was married five weeks after my father's death.
It was a terrible way to start a marriage.
I couldn't really grieve because I married a man
who, like my mother, never talked about feelings.
So, by the time I started to write, I really had a lot to get out.
("Every Day I Have the Blues" by Jeanne Dee playing)
♪ Gonna pack up ♪
♪ Move on down the line... ♪
In the '60s, I was living on a cul-de-sac in New Jersey,
and I don't think any woman on that cul-de-sac worked.
We all had babies.
And I liked having babies.
I had two children.
But I think, from the time I got married, I never felt that I fit in.
I played at being a married lady.
I went from being my parents' little girl to John's little wife,
and I was lost.
I had all this creative energy that I didn't know where to put.
So, when Randy was about four and Larry was two, I decided...
I had to do something.
I wanted a career very much.
(laughing): It was before women's lib,
but I knew that I wanted a career.
And I wanted to be at home with the kids.
And I-I think an awful lot of mothers that read to their children all the time think,
"Oh, well, I'll do that, too."
And what I started out doing was terrible, um,
imitation Dr. Seuss.
That's what I'll call it.
I would sit down and illustrate them,
and I'm definitely not an illustrator.
"You Mom, you? You were a kid?
"Oh please tell us what you did!
"Okay, okay, I'll tell you all the things I did when I was small.
"I sucked my thumb and loved a bear.
One time, I cut off all my hair."
Every night, I made them up in my head while I was doing the dinner dishes.
John said, "If you want to do this, it's okay with me
"as long as it doesn't interfere with our lives.
"I mean, you take care of the kids and you manage the house, and...
"in your spare time, if you want to do this,
okay."
You know, I took it seriously, but he would joke with people and say,
"I only have to buy Judy pencils and paper, and she's happy.
I don't have to worry about a charge card at Saks Fifth Avenue."
I decided that I would do this or I would never really find out,
could I possibly get published or was I just a joke?
I wrote every day when my kids were at school.
You know, years went by.
I would send things out to different publishing companies,
and they were rejected.
The first rejection, I cried in the closet.
The second rejection, it's like, "Well, wait till they see
what I'm gonna send next."
I just kept doing it and doing it.
My husband met someone who wrote successful children's books
and sent him one of mine.
And then came this letter.
Oh, that letter.
It was like, "Get out your handkerchief and get ready to cry."
"You can't write," basically.
And yeah, I cried a little, but then he got me fired up.
It's like, "I will show that guy.
I will show him that I can... I do have something."
I gave up on the idea of the picture books.
Why am I doing this when what I really love to read is
stories, novels?
There was a new young publishing company called Bradbury Press,
and they were looking for realistic fiction
for middle-grade kids.
I thought, "Well, Judy, this is gonna be your chance."
♪ ♪
I sent a manuscript called Iggie's House to them,
and somehow they found something in it worthwhile.
I still don't know how that ever happened.
I just think it's my good luck, but they wanted to work with me.
(laughing)
I was cuckoo with excitement.
My first advance was $350.
I bought myself a new electric typewriter.
I was learning. I had written Green Kangaroo.
I wrote Iggie's House.
But these were stories told from the outside
rather than from inside.
It wasn't really from here, not until I wrote Margaret.
JOANNE: I was visiting my parents with my new baby.
It was summer of 1969,
and Judy came to visit.
And she said, "I'm writing a story
about a little girl who talks to God."
JUDY: Margaret is an 11-year-old girl
who has just moved to a new town and she wants to fit in.
She's thinking about puberty,
and she finds a confidant in God.
I felt, "I need to write this book."
I remember, being that age,
I was fascinated by the idea
of changing bodies and breast development for me
and getting my period.
I was just obsessed by it.
I wanted to write the truth, the reality of being that age.
(typewriter clacking)
I wrote a first draft so fast in like six weeks...
...and worked with the best editor in the whole world, Dick Jackson.
"October 14, 1969.
"Dear Dick, I am having the best time writing this book.
"It is terribly controversial, I think.
"It deals with sixth-grade girls, religion, menstruation,
"bras, boys and other goodies.
But I think girl readers are going to love it."
Dick Jackson decided to publish the book,
and that totally changed everything.
"Are you there God? It's me, Margaret."
JUDY: "Are you there God?
"It's me, Margaret.
"Gretchen, my friend, got her period.
"I'm so jealous God.
"I hate myself for being so jealous, but I am.
"I wish you'd help me just a little.
"Nancy's sure she's going to get it soon, too.
"And if I'm last I don't know what I'll do.
Oh please God. I just want to be normal."
I immediately had that seismic sort of recognition of like, "Yes.
"You are as obsessed with your friends as I am,
"and so I trust you.
And wherever you're going, I'm kind of like down to come with you."
It felt like Margaret was someone I knew.
Here I was, this flat-chested girl from Brooklyn, um,
who always felt a little bit outside of things.
It's that period where you are too old to be a child
and too young to be a teenager,
and yet you're existing in both those worlds at the same time
and not having a sense of where you belong.
The bittersweetness of that unbelonging is so a part of becoming an adolescent
and becoming an adult.
11, 12 is such a turning point.
You're on the cusp, when things are gonna change
and things are gonna happen and you still don't know everything
and you're curious.
I can remember once opening up my World Book Encyclopedia to "S"
and reading, and there it was... "sex," it said.
And then going through it furiously, and it didn't tell me anything.
I mean, it talked about plants and things, and I was so furious.
I slammed it shut and threw it across the room.
I was just really angry.
And when I got to be in fifth and sixth grade,
my friends started to develop,
get breasts, get their periods.
I wanted that more than anything in the whole world.
Oh, boy, I even lied.
I lied in sixth grade and said I had my period
because my friends did.
I wore, uh, what were then called a sanitary napkin
that I got from my mother's closet.
I wore it to school so they could pat my backside
and feel it and know that I had it.
I, too, had my period.
(chuckling): Total lie.
ANNA KONKLE: It just felt like there was this treasure trove of true experiences
that on some level we were told were wrong or shameful.
And there's so much magic and terror in that time,
which makes it funny and also resonant.
To wake up one day and you're bleeding,
you know, from your vagina, like, that's wild.
I remember being bereft
because my best friend had gotten it first
and literally, like, hurling something
across a room in a rage when I found out.
And I didn't get my period until I was almost 15,
so I was really feeling like I was, I mean, deeply behind the curve.
And then about a month in, I was like, "Uh, can we send this back?"
I got my first period at a track meet
in yellow and white short shorts.
'Cause that's where you want to get it for the first time.
Just, like, full blood and a sweatshirt tied around your waist.
I mean, we literally, when I was growing up,
had commercials about how embarrassed people were by their period
and how they had to leave the party with a sweatshirt tied around their waist.
It happens to every girl.
- What happens to every girl? - Womanhood.
Oh, you mean the curse.
- What do you call it? - The curse.
You know, being unwell.
How periods have been portrayed in the media
is, in general, poor.
Help me!
KONKLE: Very traumatic, very sad.
(screams) Oh, my God!
It was something that was whispered about, and there was a shame to it.
And I think that what Judy did was show that this is nothing to be ashamed.
Like, this is something to be celebrated.
And it became this hot book because our friends were reading it
and their friends were reading it.
KONKLE: It was the first book that I had read
about a girl wanting to grow boobs and the myths around
how to get them and what to do.
"'But look at the size of her.
"They're huge!' Janie said.
"'Do you suppose we'll look like that at eighteen?' Gretchen asked.
"Our meeting ended with 50 rounds of
'We must... we must... we must increase our bust!'"
I love it.
Uh, it was explaining things that were foreign to me, uh, quite frankly.
Uh, but it was also speaking to me
about stuff that I was thinking about
in terms of religion, um, and where you fit in the world.
And there was this moment where... "Wow, like, Judy's talking to me."
JUDY: "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.
"I've been looking for you God.
"I looked in temple. I looked in church.
"And today, I looked for you when I wanted to confess.
"But you weren't there.
"I didn't feel you at all.
"Not the way I do when I talk to you at night.
Why God? Why do I only feel you when I'm alone?"
It's a kid negotiating their relationship with God.
I mean, it-it's just like... it's so huge, actually.
Oh, yeah, this child protagonist contains multitudes.
Like, of course this person can navigate, like, huge questions
about, like, existence and God
while also wanting her period and, like, doing daily bust exercises
and also feeling some type of way about her friends.
Like, of course.
PAT SCALES: I knew the minute I read Margaret
that kids would flock to this book.
The realism that-that was available prior to Judy
was not realistic at all.
(laughing): A lot of people thought kids should be reading cute animal stories
or things like syrupy sweet romance books.
So, when you sit down
with a book like Margaret
and you've never seen anything like that before in your life,
that's life-changing.
- ♪ ♪ - (indistinct chatter)
REPORTER: Look at this.
This bookstore in Denver has had a lot of autograph parties for a lot of authors
but never attracted this many people.
Writing Margaret gave me my sense of who I was
and what I might be able to do.
So, the day I sent Margaret off to the publisher,
I sat down the next day and started
what would become Then Again, Maybe I Won't.
It was like, "Okay, I've been a 12-year-old girl.
Now I'm gonna be a 12-year-old boy."
And I never stopped. I never stopped.
And the next few years, I went from book to book to book to book to book.
REPORTER: You read other books by other authors
that are written primarily for kids your age... what, 11, 12, 13?
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah.
- How did hers compare with others? - They're much better.
- She knows how kids our age act. - She-she knows what kids are,
and she knows what grown-ups are, and she...
- She knows how they cope with each other. - Yeah.
REPORTER: Does she understand you better than your parents do?
The way she writes, I think she does.
It really didn't take off until the books went into paperback
so the children could afford to buy them.
Success was slow and sweet, and I think probably that was healthy
because it kept me at home writing.
♪ ♪
This writing had so changed my life.
It had given me something of my own.
I don't know if I could really celebrate that with anyone.
My kids, yes.
They were so young they didn't even know what any of it meant, but...
(lively chatter)
I remember going to a party on my street.
I felt that the other women
weren't necessarily wishing me well.
It, like... "Who does she think she is?"
"When are you gonna write a real book?"
That was said to me for years that I wrote children's books.
"So, when are you gonna write a real book, Judy?"
Like...
how do you answer that question?
I am writing real books.
♪ ♪
Your fantasies as a writer are:
Someday something that I write will be published.
And maybe someday I'll hear from somebody who reads one of these books.
I mean, this is fantasy. And then the letters
started coming, and it was something that I never expected.
You get a thousand to 2,000 letters every month...
- I do. Yes. - ...fr-from kids who've read your books,
and they have questions.
- What kind of questions do they ask? - Yeah. Well, they're wonderful letters.
It's not so much questions as a sharing of feelings.
And they write about their innermost feelings.
Oh, my God. This is so exciting.
All the children who wrote.
I've always been emotional about their letters,
that they would pour their hearts out in this way.
CHILD: "Dear Judy, Please send me the facts of life in number order."
CHILD 2: "Dear Judy, I wanted to tell you that I have a million problems."
CHILD 3: "Today was the worst day in my entire life.
Everything at school is going wrong."
It isn't easy being a little kid.
It's really not.
Kids opened up to me in a way
that I think they felt they couldn't to their parents.
"Dear Judy, I'm in fifth grade and developing.
"It is kind of embarrassing.
Without your books, I would be nowhere."
I mean, it's just so much easier to open yourself up
to someone that you're never gonna see.
You know, it's a stranger, and yet it's not a stranger.
You feel connected to this person.
LORRIE KIM: In fourth grade, the girls, they seemed so sophisticated to me.
They were all, you know, cute white Jewish girls,
and, you know, I was, like, the only Korean girl,
(laughing): and I didn't know anything.
I remember the word they used was "naive"
and they kind of shook their heads sadly.
And they said, "You know what she needs? She needs to read Judy Blume."
One of my classmates said that she had written a fan letter to Judy Blume
and gotten back a signed brochure, and my mind exploded.
Like, you can just write to her?
JUDY: Oh, Lorrie, Lorrie.
I can still remember a part of Lorrie's first letter.
"Why do you write so freely about periods?
"In our class, whenever a boy goes near the 'B' shelves,
"I quake in my shoes
lest he sees something he is not supposed to see."
So Louisa May Alcott. I just love it.
LORRIE: "First of all, how do you know all our little secrets?
"In reading Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret,
"I found that Margaret's problems were very like my own,
"for my mother is Buddhist and my father Christian.
Also, I am not yet growing, and several of my fourth-grade classmates wear bras."
"I did not even know what menstruation was until I read your books.
Then, to test my mother..."
"I took a sanitary napkin from the box and asked what it was for.
"She pretended to not hear me and evaded my questions.
"When do you think is the average time for girls to get their periods and bras?
"I would very much like to have an answer for that.
"Sincerely, Lorrie Kim.
"PS. If you know some good sex books,
could you take the trouble to give me title, author, et cetera of the book?"
She always made it so interesting.
I couldn't wait to read her letters.
- Did your children come to you for advice? - No, of course not.
(laughter)
No, I'm that perfect mother to all those kids out there
- who think, "If only, if only." - Yeah. Yeah.
Um, but to my own... my own kids, I was Judy, I was Mother, I was Mom.
Watch carefully.
Oh, thank you. I will.
You have to get it right in the middle.
JUDY: When I was little, my mother was a very, very timid cook.
We had the same thing every...
You know, every Monday, every Tuesday, every Wednesday,
- we knew what it was going to be. - We had that growing up.
No, you didn't exactly. No.
RANDY: Okay, okay, that's good.
You know, in my day, in my day, it was...
I was a working woman and so proud of being a working woman.
It's not for everybody.
I always say to young people,
"Yeah, you can have it all but not necessarily all at the same time."
Maybe yes, maybe not.
I was very independent, and I, um, felt
that I had raised the kids almost on my own anyway
because my husband was a very busy person professionally
and was always off someplace else... golf or tennis weekends...
and the child-rearing was left pretty much to me.
I don't think John ever read one of my books.
Mm-mm.
I didn't really care.
I didn't care. Randy read them.
I mean, my daughter was my first reader when she was in elementary school.
Well, I came home from school, and there were pages waiting for me.
- JUDY: She was a reader. - And then she watched.
"What are you laughing at? What's so funny?"
- (Judy chuckling) - "What do you think of this?"
JUDY: You know, in those days,
I felt that my life would be very short because of my father's
and everybody in his family.
And so, uh,
I needed to hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, get something done.
I just remember the sound of the typewriter... pa-pa-pa-pa...
and how fast you typed.
And I could hear in the other room the typewriter going.
I was conscious of you working,
but I also didn't feel like, "Oh, Mom's not available
because she's at work."
You didn't have the kind of fame a movie star has
where you were being recognized on the street.
Like, I didn't have that sense of it.
And it just felt like I was in any other house.
JUDY: In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,
Fudge was based on my son Larry.
When he was a toddler, I mean, Larry wanted to be Frisky the Cat
and ate his supper under the table.
He would go under the table with a little bowl.
I mean, just so many endearing little qualities of Fudge come from Larry.
The Fudge books eventually became a five-book series.
(laughing): What a breakout star Fudge was.
I think I was the Fudge, you know?
I was the one who was always singing
and always performing.
And I just... I must have been sort of unbearable.
The scene where Fudge eats the turtle...
that was just worth its weight in gold.
"Fudge was standing in the kitchen doorway with a big grin on his face.
"My mother picked him up and patted his head.
"'Fudgie, ' she said to him, 'tell Mommy where brother's turtle is.'
"'In tummy, ' Fudge said.
"'No!' Mom shouted.
"'Yes!' Fudge shouted back.
"'Yes?' Mom asked weakly, holding onto a chair with both hands.
"'Yes!' Fudge beamed.
"My mother moaned and picked up my brother.
'Oh no!'"
You know, I never wanted to use my kids.
I always felt, that's their privacy.
But with Fudge was a whole different thing.
I mean, I never felt I was using you.
You were older by the time I was writing about Fudge.
It made me feel a little bit noodley if I was dating somebody,
then they would say, like, "Oh," you know, "I'm dating Fudge."
- (Judy laughing) - You know, like, ha-ha-ha-ha.
- Uh-huh. Right. Right. - (laughing)
JUDY: When Randy was in fifth grade,
kids were riding the school bus.
That whole school bus culture.
And she came home and told me bad things happened.
We weren't even using the word "bully."
I mean, we all knew that word, but it wasn't in style.
And this is where the idea came from for Blubber.
I mean, literally, this is the... this is the copy of Blubber that I had.
She wasn't that big.
You know, they teased that girl,
but when you look at her on the cover,
she's just a little chubby.
The title still sort of, like... (groans)
It always kind of made me uncomfortable.
(sighs)
I... you know, I remember when Mrs. Sollecito handed me this book
and she was like, "I really think that you need to read this,"
because there was a lot of bullying that was going on in my class.
To this day, I still have a visceral, visceral reaction
to some of the scenes in that book.
There's one scene in particular in the bathroom.
JUDY: "'Look who's here, ' Wendy said. 'It's Blubber!'
"'In the flesh, ' Caroline added.
"'I wonder what's under her cape?' Wendy asked.
"'There's got to be her blubber... at least.'
"'Yeah... her blubber's under her cape!' Caroline said
"and she and Wendy started laughing.
"I giggled a little too.
"'Strip her!' Wendy said, yanking up Linda's skirt.
"Linda started to cry.
'Oh my... Blubber's blubbering.'"
The people around Linda are extremely unkind,
and that does not really resolve itself by the end of the book.
You know, the kid who's been bullied all this time, Blubber,
turns around and becomes the bully.
I remember reading that book and feeling really conflicted.
Guess what. In the book about bullying,
everybody sucks.
It leaves open the-the question:
Okay, so what's your part in this? How do you... how do you fit in here?
It made me want not to be horrible.
It made me understand that just being a bystander to cruel behavior
made you cruel.
Wow. Oh, I even remember this back ad. Look at that.
Other Choices for Becoming a Woman.
I just remember reading that a bunch of times.
CHILD: "Dear Judy, I would like to know if you know if I'm a normal fifth grader."
CHILD 2: "Everybody thinks I'm so sweet,
but I have some feelings that no one knows about."
CHILD 3: "Dear Judy, I love your books.
I'm interested in sex. I am ten."
LORRIE: "Dear Judy, You may have noticed
"that whenever I have a problem I unload it on you.
"I can't say anything to anyone else.
"I used to confide in my diary,
but everyone keeps reading it."
"When was the last time I wrote? Was it just two days ago?"
I am really her diary.
I mean, it's dangerous to keep a diary when you're afraid
a parent is going to read it.
And every now and then, this person
that she sent her diary to... me... would answer her.
So, this is the first letter I got from Judy.
The picture that she... She's very pretty. She's really pretty.
"Dear Lorrie, I just loved your letter.
"Are you really in fourth grade? You sound so much older.
"Don't worry about growing. It will happen in time.
I was 14 when I got my first period."
"I wish you wouldn't worry about boys reading my books.
"I think it's good for boys to read about girls
and girls to read about boys."
"We are all human, and the more we learn about each other,
"the better we'll be able to get along.
"And if you have more questions or want to tell me anything else, write, okay?
Love, Judy Blume."
JUDY: Lorrie, she shared everything that was going on,
everything that she was feeling.
We wrote for many, many, many, many years.
LORRIE: I did wonder why on earth she was
spending her time reading all this stuff I was writing.
You know, isn't she busy? (laughs)
Um, but, you know, well,
maybe I can make it worth her while by reporting from the front.
Like, you know, here we are in the sixth-grade classroom,
and this is what our real live sixth grader is thinking today.
"Dear Judy, Seventh graders are C-R-E-E-P-S.
All they care about is sex."
JUDY: Kids wrote to me about everything from,
you know, their bodies to problems with family and being accepted.
CHILD: "Nothing I do is good enough for my mother.
If I get all A's and one B, she says I should have tried harder."
Parental expectations are really tough, I can tell you.
Because I know what they were for me.
♪ ♪
My mother had really some low self-esteem issues herself.
But she wanted me to be perfect.
"I need you to be perfect because I'm not."
And I knew I wasn't,
and I pretended a lot of the time.
I told her what she wanted to hear.
Yes, I had the prettiest dress, and yes, I was the most popular.
When I became a teenager,
I thought I couldn't fail at anything,
and that was hard.
Deenie!
Deenie. Oh, my God.
She's gonna... sh-she could just die rather than wear the brace.
Deenie is the book where the beautiful, beautiful girl
has scoliosis, so she can't be a model anymore.
(gasps) Gasp, horror, right?
And she doesn't even really want to be a model.
It's her mom that keeps pushing her to be a model.
"'Hey, Ma...' I called. 'Here's the bus.'
"As we got on, the bus driver greeted me with, 'Hi, Beautiful!'
"Mom gave him a big smile and said,
"'Deenie's the beauty, Helen's the brain.'
"The bus driver didn't say anything else
"because what does he know about our family?
He was probably sorry he bothered with us in the first place."
I'm going along reading about this character who's got this mom
who's putting pressure on her to be, you know, a model.
And, you know, scoliosis and friendships and school.
And then all of a sudden, there's this passage that says, like,
"I went to bed. I touched myself in my special place.
That's what I do to help me fall asleep."
So, like, just dropped in the middle of a narrative
about all these other things, and I was... it stopped me cold
because I had so much shame about my own masturbating.
Was it difficult some years ago when you started?
I never thought about it.
Um, my own sexuality was an important part of my life.
It was always there with me. I never heard...
For instance, I never heard the word "masturbation" when I was growing up,
- but I knew that I had this special place. - Yes.
And I was lucky enough to have friends who were open about it,
- and we all... we all talked about it. - And talked.
"Do you have that special place?"
"Yes." "Well, I have it, too."
Not only is Deenie dealing with a disability.
In the midst of the disability, she finds pleasure.
It's honoring the fact that just because you have... have physical differences,
it does not mean that you are void of the opportunity for pleasure, right?
And simultaneously, girls should find pleasure.
As a kid, being 13, we were watching
guys in movies that were on the big screen
of my little town's theater masturbating.
Oh, yeah. (grunts)
(gasps)
And it was funny and accepted and whatever.
And then you talk about girls, and...
and even in my school, the idea of a girl masturbating meant they were a "slut."
You know, it was immediately vilified,
where guys could talk about it at lunch. (chuckles)
JUDY: I did meet a male principal who said to me,
"If this had been a boy character,
"it would've been normal.
"But this is a girl.
This is not normal."
Guess what, male principal, I have news for you.
It is normal. (laughs)
You know, my mother, she was a crackerjack typist
and always typed the final draft of my book
before I sent it in.
Never said a critical word, never said a critical word.
And now I do wonder, well, what did she think
of all the, you know, menstruation?
And then Deenie... did I let her type Deenie? Masturbation?
Oh, my God. All the things we never talked about.
Deenie is funny because I think its reputation,
uh, in the popular consciousness
is that it is the "female masturbation novel,"
uh, which only amounts to a line or two in the book.
Reading it now, uh, I thought,
oh, this is actually the parental control novel.
This is about what happens when your parents
have ideas about who you are,
and how do you decide if your parents are right
or if you want to follow your own path?
JUDY: "I went up the stairs as fast as I could,
"slammed my bedroom door and tried to flop down on my bed.
"But I couldn't even flop anymore.
"So I cursed. I said every bad word I knew.
"Every single one.
I yelled them as loud as I could and then I screamed them again."
Deenie is really a people pleaser for a lot of the book.
And then she really finds herself.
She gets really angry at people, and she lets it fly.
And Deenie kind of unleashing herself in the book was really helpful to me.
You know, come for the female masturbation,
stay for the empowerment.
("Desire" by Lazarus playing)
The sort of fascinating thing about the role of Judy's books in the '70s
is that there was so much change
in terms of sexuality, social roles for adults.
♪ Your love... ♪
You know, we had the sexual revolution going on,
we had a mass wave of divorce.
Society was being totally refashioned on every level.
WOMAN: ♪ We're gonna ask all our sisters here ♪
♪ To come and join the fight... ♪
JUDY: It was the time of the women's movement.
It didn't come to suburban New Jersey then.
We were late.
But I knew.
You know, I got Ms. magazine.
(sighs) I was young.
I wanted to be out there.
- What do we want? - Equality!
JUDY: I wanted to go march.
I wanted to burn bras.
- WOMAN: ...and the time is now! - (applause)
JUDY: I didn't do it.
Instead, I stayed home and I wrote.
I could be fearless in my writing
in a way that maybe I wasn't always in my life.
Let's talk about the book, the-the young boy and the young girl,
Forever..., about, uh, the high school kids deciding
whether or not to have a-a relation... a sexual relationship.
- They're seniors in high school. - Is there any...
- That's Forever... It's a love story. - Okay. All right.
REPORTER: Forever... is about 18-year-olds
in love, having sex
for the first time.
It is a very explicit description.
And it's her biggest-selling book.
JUDY: You know, when my daughter was 14,
Randy was still reading books where,
if a girl succumbed and did this terrible thing with a boy...
which was never really spelled out in the books,
but you knew that she had had sex...
the girl was punished.
Her life was ruined.
She would get pregnant, and this would lead to
her banishment or, uh, illegal abortion,
and the girl would die.
Randy said to me, "Mother, couldn't you write a book
"about two nice kids, and they fall in love
and they do it, and nobody has to die?"
And I thought, "Yes, yes, I should write that book."
"Sibyl Davison has a genius I.Q.
and has been laid by at least six different guys."
Has there ever been a better opening line in a novel in history?
(chuckles): I say no.
This cover promised some things to me.
Like, I said, "Okay, well, there's... if there's crumpled bedding,
I'm gonna... I'm gonna learn some things."
- REPORTER: Have you read Forever...? - Mm.
I mean, I just opened up a page, and I thought,
"No, at nine, we're not ready for this yet."
But, you know, at 13, I think it might be, you know, really very appropriate.
Will it be all right with your family?
- Yeah. - Okay, good.
Well, it was sexually explicit. I mean,
the publisher called it "her first novel for adults."
Which made me crazy
because it wasn't meant for adult readers.
There were books that were written about teenagers,
but there was not a-a categorization that called it YA.
It grew in popularity because the interest was there.
There was this need for books
that were speaking to kids that were 12 and up, 14 and up.
Forever... was the one we weren't allowed to read.
Forever... was a Judy Blume book that was not in the library.
It was a revelation, and it was so illicit-feeling.
Forever... was the book that, in seventh grade,
we'd, like, pass it around and we'd, like,
put notes and be like, "Ralph!"
People used to say, "Page 85, Ralph."
Right? And so, if you know what that means, then you get it.
If you don't, I'm not gonna tell you.
"He led my hand to his penis.
"'Katherine... I'd like you to meet Ralph...
"'Ralph, this is Katherine.
She's a very good friend of mine.'"
(laughs)
You know, it's just a name. I don't know.
Michael names his penis, and he presents it to Katherine.
"Katherine, meet Ralph. Ralph, I'd like you to meet Katherine."
"In books penises are always described as hot and throbbing,
"but Ralph felt like ordinary skin.
Just his shape was different."
Like, you can literally imagine Katherine being like, "Oh, oh, okay."
Sexual encounters don't have to be so serious,
especially when it's your first time.
Judy wrote these beautiful scenes that are awkward,
that are a little, like, "Oh, no, we don't know what we're...
Ooh, is this okay? Is this fi... What? Are we good?"
She goes from, like, you know, getting comfortable with sex
to having, like, really good sex.
"And then I came.
"And as he finished I came again.
'Happy graduation...' I laughed."
(laughing)
The thing that we were sort of more attracted to
as 12-year-old girls was the boyfriend.
Like, "Oh, my God, I wish I had a boyfriend like Michael."
And then, when I look at it now, I'm like, "Michael is such a dick."
That boy pushes on her...
...in a way that at the time probably felt like,
"Wow, he's only pushing on her a little bit.
He could be so much worse."
But she has to say no an awful lot.
RACHEL LOTUS: As much as you can see how the character of Michael is
in the beginning... pushing and encouraging and kind of
drawing Katherine in...
she, too, wants it.
And she talks about what her body feels like.
The way that Judy treats female sexuality
and desire and pleasure, it's still groundbreaking.
I just cannot believe that it does our kids any favor
to present sex with punishment.
I would much rather give them sex with love, sex with responsibility.
CHILD: "Dear Judy, I just finished Forever...,
"and I was so disappointed by the ending.
"I cried for hours.
Katherine and Michael... I never wanted to see them split."
"I'll never regret one single thing we did together
"because what we had was very special.
"Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently.
"Maybe.
"I think it's just that I'm not ready for forever.
"I hope that Michael knew what I was thinking.
"I hope that my eyes got the message through to him,
because all I could manage to say was, 'See you around...'"
"'Yeah, ' he answered, 'see you around.'"
Ugh. Kills me. That kills me. (laughs)
In-in somebody else's hands, suddenly there would be a moral.
You know, or the sex would have been the bad thing or the wrong thing or...
And it... no, no. No, it's what happened,
it became a part of her history, and it's now gonna be something
that she carries on with her next relationship.
JUDY: The ellipses after Forever... dot, dot, dot.
Forever... doesn't always last forever.
When I wrote this book, I wasn't really happy in my marriage.
I was for so long a good girl, trying to please others,
and I tried to do it for a long time.
16 years.
Actually, I think the writing allowed the marriage
to last much longer than it might have otherwise.
When I wrote It's Not the End of the World,
I guess divorce was on my mind.
Maybe I was trying out the idea through writing this book.
I was 37 when I left my marriage.
I don't know what happened. It was like...
"Enough of this. I have to live.
I have to get out of here."
I wanted to see the world.
I wanted to travel everywhere,
and I couldn't stand one more day of suburban life.
You wanted the freedom.
I just looked at my life, and I said,
"Have I led my own life, or have I led the life
that my mother wanted me to lead?"
I thought, "I can do this.
"I can be divorced.
I know how to do this." And of course, I didn't.
I did leave.
And then the first guy I met, I married...
...and went to London, where he was then based.
He was a scientist.
And I went with my kids.
Took them out of school, seventh and ninth grade.
We were flitting around Europe, going to scientific conferences.
(scoffs) I didn't know what I was doing.
I was rebelling in the stupidest way.
And it was very rough.
And not just for me but for my kids.
And I'm... you know, still have my guilt about that.
That second marriage didn't work out,
and we were together maybe four years.
The hardest thing was having to admit that I had made a terrible mistake.
That was so hard.
I'm such a jerk. I'm such a fool.
What was I doing?
Um, really, really hard
but part of my growing up.
But here's the thing.
Through all the worst times in my life,
I've been able to write, and writing has gotten me through.
And now the adult Judy had a burning story to tell.
I wanted to write about a woman who has been married for a number of years
and questions her choice.
It was very, very hard to write.
And it was close to home, I admit.
"Norman kissed her. He tasted like Colgate toothpaste.
"She hated Colgate.
"Question: Did she also hate Norman?
"Answer: Yes, sometimes.
"Norman's cold tongue was darting in and out of her mouth.
"One kiss. That was enough for him.
"Sandy didn't mind. Her lip hurt.
"Besides, his kisses no longer pleased her,
no longer offered any excitement."
I saw Wifey as her breakthrough.
She went away from kids
and dealt with the woman that she was now.
And the feelings that she had
and experiencing a lot of the things that we at 35 were feeling.
♪ ♪
JUDY: It jumped way up on the bestseller list.
It was a commercial hit.
Wifey was such a big runaway bestseller.
JUDY: Wifey is meant to be funny.
It's sexy and it's naughty.
She's cutting loose, maybe the way I was cutting loose.
"The national bestseller of a very nice housewife
(laughing): with a very dirty mind."
This was made for me.
How did I not read this book? What the hell?
I am realizing that on the cover of Wifey
she is naked and removing her wedding ring.
I do not remember the va-va-voom cover.
"Wifey is tired of chicken on Wednesdays and sex on Saturdays."
I don't remember even feeling like I was ready for Wifey.
I don't know if I'm ready for Wifey now.
And there were some people that told me this would be "the end of your career."
"Kiss your career goodbye, Judy.
You publish this book, that's it."
I guess I have about had it with novels about suburban housewives
who seek to liberate themselves by having affairs.
Wifey is billed as an adult novel.
The book isn't that adult.
It's just that author Judy Blume usually writes for kids.
If Wifey were truly an adult novel,
I don't think the sexuality in it would seem so gratuitous.
You know, when you write a book, you open yourself up to the world,
and-and... and they can pour salt on your wounds.
Um, it's tough to go through.
I read my reviews, for better or worse.
I used to mark them up with red pencil, "I hate you. I hate you, bitch."
But I... of course, I never sent any of that.
It was just a way to get it out.
RINGWALD: I remember being ten years old.
She had just written Wifey,
which absolutely scandalized everyone.
And yet they all had copies of it.
(laughing)
You know, all of the mothers, including my own, had copies.
JUDY: When Wifey was written, my kids were young teenagers...
I think they were 15 and 17... and I said,
"Look, you know, there are some things in this book
that you might find strange, and let's talk about it."
And they went away and read it, and they came back just hooting
and said, "We never knew you knew all of that."
(laughing)
Some people were enraged that I had written such a book.
And if I had to write such a book,
it should have been under a different name.
The few people who feel that way have labeled me.
I am a children's book writer.
Therefore, how can I step out of that role and do anything else?
But I can say to kids, "Hey, look, I write for all ages.
"I've written an adult novel, Wifey.
That's for your parents, not for you right now." Kids...
- And let the readers choose wisely. - Absolutely.
(applause)
(band playing "Hail to the Chief")
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute
the office of president of the United States, so help me God.
Uh, congratulations, sir.
JUDY: After the presidential election of 1980,
overnight, the censors came out of the woodwork
and burst onto the stage.
Demand those parties and politicians align themselves
with the eternal values in this book!
Attempts to censor books are nothing new.
What is new is the phenomenal increase in such attempts since the November election.
The Moral Majority and like-minded groups believe they have a mandate.
It was like, "It's our turn now.
"And we are going to tell you
not just what our kids can't read but what all kids can't read."
NORMA GABLER: I don't know how many of you
have taken a good look at any of your children's books.
Uh, I think you would be appalled.
We have many calls from parents who are deeply concerned
with library books, and they should be.
Homosexual activity!
REPORTER: There have been demands to ban The Diary of Anne Frank.
Classics by Shakespeare and Dickens, even dictionaries,
have all been purged from library shelves because someone found them offensive.
It was frightening. It was depressing.
I mean, what is this fear
that's gripping the country?
What about libraries who ban your books?
What are your feelings about those?
- You want to know how I feel about it? - Yeah, I mean...
I get crazy mad. I mean, I really... I get angry.
I'm offended. I think the kids have a right to read.
I think they have a right to know.
They have a right to get honest answers to their questions.
And-and banning a book isn't gonna change any of that.
I used to get the hate phone calls.
"Hello. I'm calling about such and such a book by Judy Blume.
Do you know what's in that book?"
"Why, indeed, I do. We published that book.
"The best thing I can say to you
"is that the First Amendment allows us to publish this book,
and it can appear anywhere."
(indistinct chatter, laughter)
REAGAN: Well, bless you, you have not wavered.
JUDY: Phyllis Schlafly put out a booklet
that said how to rid
your schools and libraries of Judy Blume books.
I think they should be banned, right.
I think they're a little bit too deep for the children.
JUDY: I mean, and then it just grew and it-it became crazy.
"We want to remove this book and this book and this book and that."
They just didn't want the books to exist.
ANNOUNCER: From Washington, Crossfire.
On the left, Tom Braden.
On the right, Pat Buchanan.
In the cross fire, award-winning writer of children's books, Judy Blume.
I was asked to do this show called Crossfire.
So I said, "Okay."
Ms. Blume looks like a very nice lady. What I wanted to ask you...
and I've looked through three of your books...
what is this preoccupation with sex
in books for ten-year-old children?
I had never heard of Pat Buchanan at that point.
There's a lesson for you... always know what you're getting yourself into.
Now, I looked at several of these, Ms. Blume,
and one of them talks about masturbation.
Another one talks about a little boy
who's, uh... who is window-peeping on his neighbor, a little girl.
Another one talks about somebody throwing up.
Throwing up is sex?
Well, it has to do with bodily functions.
What is all this doing in a book for ten-year-olds?
There is no preoccupation with it.
Did you read the whole book, or did you just read pages that were paperclipped?
All right, here's the cover.
Pat Buchanan was coming after me, you know?
It's like he had a hammer, and it's like, "Whoa, what is with you?"
Why can't ten-year-olds... you write an interesting,
exciting book for ten-year-olds without getting into a discussion of masturbation?
He was attacking me and reading pages out of context.
First of all, Deenie is not about masturbation.
It's about a girl with scoliosis.
And he kept going at me, how that's not normal
and what a terrible thing, and finally, I said to him...
- Are you hung up about masturbation? Huh? - Well, it's all... you are.
You are hung up about this stuff. It's in these books.
One... one scene in one book.
(chuckling): Because I couldn't stand it anymore.
It was a very strange experience.
There were personal attacks coming from adults.
I was accused of all kinds of evildoing.
And once, because I am a supporter of Planned Parenthood,
I got something like 700 death threats in a day,
and...
we took that very seriously.
I used to wonder, when I would go out in public with an audience...
it would go through my head, you know,
"Is some angry parent gonna come in and shoot you?"
It never stopped me, and I did it,
but I learned that you can't debate the zealots.
I mean, there wasn't any point to it, really,
except making myself sick, so I stopped.
- Thank you, everyone. - (cheering and applause)
Instead, I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship.
It made more sense for me to work to protect not just my books
but all of these books that were being attacked.
That was something positive that I could do.
No one here is talking about kids,
and they have very clear ideas about what they want to read and why.
And I know of one instance where-where a sixth-grade girl took a petition around,
collected hundreds of signatures, went before the school board
and spoke eloquently on the behalf of these books.
My parents have a right to tell me what I can read,
but somebody else's parents do not have a right to tell me what I can read.
(cheering and applause)
JUDY: The last book that I did with Dick was
Here's to You, Rachel Robinson.
And in that book is a teenage boy.
He's an angry kid.
And he's in the kitchen with his younger sister.
He pours himself a glass of grape juice, and he holds it up to Rachel,
and he says, "Here's to you, Rachel Robinson.
Here's to my whole fucking family."
Dick Jackson said, "Judy, you know no book club is gonna take it.
"You can use 'fricking.'
You can use, uh, any number of words."
He said, "But it's entirely up to you,
and I stand behind you, whatever you decide to do."
And my son, my son, who was grown then,
came into the apartment that afternoon,
and I told him this story.
And he said to me...
"You're Judy Blume.
"You're honest. You're truthful.
"That's what you've always done.
How can you not be honest here?"
And I heard from a lot of people.
Said, "I won't let my child read this book."
Your child is probably out there on the playground yelling,
"Fucking, fucking, fucking," all over the place,
because it's just a word.
It's a... I-If you look it up in the dictionary... which I did...
it says "a meaningless word intensifier."
I love that.
"A meaningless word intensifier."
But it's real.
And Charles meant it.
And so there it is.
I kept working and writing all through the challenges.
I never stopped.
(indistinct chatter, laughter)
How many times you been married, Judy?
Oh, it's a very painful question for me to answer.
- Give me a painful answer. - I've been married and divorced twice.
- PANELISTS: Twice? - Mm-hmm.
- JUDY: But I can explain it all. I can. - (laughter)
You know, I had a wonderful career,
and I had great kids, and I had friends.
I had made up my mind that I just wasn't gonna have that kind of
romantic, loving, long-lasting relationship.
It just wasn't in the cards for me.
I thought I made peace with that...
when I met George.
The world's most wonderful person.
How lucky.
How lucky I was.
Oh, my God.
(Judy laughs)
"Man thinking profound thoughts..."
- GEORGE: "Without words." - JUDY: What? "Without words"?
(laughing)
George and I met in December of '79.
George was with me through all of the '80s
and my censorship days.
"Gray-tufted coffee sipper."
He was a law professor. He was brilliant.
- "Oy vey. What a date." - (laughing)
Yeah, yeah.
JUDY: We had a blind date, and we went out to dinner.
Did I make a move on you right there, then and there?
- No, I... No, I think you said... - No. No.
- "Can I kiss you?" - Oh.
- Right, I was really ahead of my time. - (laughs)
- GEORGE: "Can I kiss you?" Right? - JUDY: Yes, you did.
- You asked. You were very nice. - GEORGE (laughing): Right. Right.
I tried to take her out the next Tuesday night again,
but she said, "I already have a date," and so I said...
- So I went out... No. No, no, no, no, no. - Go ahead. Go ahead.
I went out, and then you called later, and you said,
- "Can I come over for a late date?" - "Are you... Is the date over?"
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. - Right? And you came over.
And that was, um, 41 and a half years ago.
- I never left. - And he never left.
♪ ♪
JUDY: George is magic.
He's a wonderful complement for me.
I can always find something to worry about.
He's not a worrier.
He's easygoing, nonjudgmental.
I'm very attached.
I promised myself I would never, ever get so attached,
but I did, and I am.
Did I add the poppy seeds?
- JUDY: You added the poppy seeds. - (laughs) Okay.
GEORGE: I didn't really know who Judy Blume was.
I don't know what I would've done
if I had held her in awe.
You can't... you're not gonna start a relationship with somebody
if you hold in awe of them,
because you're not... you're not relating to them.
You're relating to the... to the image.
And this wasn't an image. This was just a girl.
- (laughing) - (laughing): "Just a girl."
Just another girl.
Hi. Welcome to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and welcome to my home.
Come on in.
This is my office.
I sit at the typewriter and type away.
Sometimes I sit at the desk and scribble.
This desk is like an old friend.
It's moved with me six times in the last six years.
♪ ♪
George and I lived in Santa Fe.
His daughter Amanda was 12.
We became a new family.
It takes a lot of working out.
It takes a lot of getting to know each other.
AMANDA COOPER: You could tell that she and my dad,
like, it was the right thing had happened.
And so it was really, really good.
JUDY: It's so beautiful.
So beautiful.
AMANDA: Of course, I was a little girl,
(chuckling): so I knew who Judy Blume was.
And they were very embarrassing, 'cause they...
when you're young and they're giggling
and, you know, kissing and hugging around the supermarket.
But, you know, they're still like that today.
It's an incredible love story.
JUDY: I was really happy.
Maybe for the first time in my adult life.
And it was then that I was able to write the book Tiger Eyes.
I thought I was telling a story
that I had heard about a young girl whose father died
and the mother took her children to live with relatives
in another part of the country.
Now I look at Tiger Eyes,
and I know that it's about
the loss of my father.
I was engaged.
Invitations were out to the wedding.
My brother came back from overseas.
My brother was in the Air Force.
And I remember coming home,
my father said, "What a banner year for the Sussmans,"
and then he got pains.
And I was with him.
I sat on the floor holding his hand, and he said,
"Oh, shit. Oh, shit, what terrible timing."
And he died. It was like, "This isn't real. This can't be real."
I mean, he was 54 years old.
My mother, she told us at the funeral,
"We're not gonna give anybody a show here.
We're not gonna get emotional."
"I feel the sweat trickling down inside my blouse,
"making a little pool in my bra.
"Jason clings to Mom's hand and keeps glancing at her, then at me.
"My mother looks straight ahead.
"She doesn't even wipe away the tears that are rolling down her cheeks.
"I've never felt so alone in my life.
(voice breaking): I shift from one..."
I can't do this.
I will do it, I will do it, but it's very hard.
(inhales deeply)
(exhales)
♪ ♪
"I shift from one foot to the other
"because my mother's shoes are too tight and my feet hurt.
"I concentrate on the pain,
"and the blisters that are forming on my little toes,
"because that way I don't have to think about the coffin
"that is being lowered into the ground.
Or that my father's body is inside it."
I think it was cathartic for me, in a way,
to finally say goodbye to my father.
CHILD: "Dear Judy, My father died,
"and it's the worst thing that ever happened to me.
The teachers and the other kids say that I should have gotten over it by now."
CHILD 2: "I know I shouldn't be telling you all this,
"that I should be telling it to a doctor,
"but I'm scared.
So please, please, please listen."
CHILD 3: "What I want is someone to tell me,
'You'll live through this.'"
This is 1982.
"Dear Judy, I know you are probably quite busy answering other people's letters,
"but I was thrilled when I found out I could write to you.
"The most recent book I have read was Tiger Eyes.
KAREN CHILSTROM and JUDY: "It was exceptional.
"It very much tells the story of things
that have also happened to me lately."
"I really need someone to talk to.
"Last December, my brother committed suicide.
"I don't even know how he did it.
"I very much would like to know,
"and I was wondering if you have any suggestions.
"If you write me, I'll write you back.
"I've sent you a stamp to pay for the postage.
"I love you.
Sincerely, your friend, Karen."
Oh, that was the beginning.
KAREN: I felt really alone.
I started to write to her in seventh grade
when I was 12.
And in eighth grade, at 13,
I... I-I realized that-that I needed more help.
I was in a really difficult point in my life.
"Dear Judy, Do you really remember me?
"I suppose that you get tons of letters just like mine.
"I'm the one whose brother committed suicide
and who had all kinds of questions."
I remember composing it,
thinking, i-if I can just say it the right way...
you know, maybe not make it sound too big
or-or not make it sound too small...
I-I believe that-that if I could just find the right language
that-that Judy... Judy would be the one
that I could talk to.
It was hard to reach out.
I said, "What's complicated about my brother's suicide
is that he-he was the one who abused me."
I just needed to be able
to tell another human being,
like, "Look what happened to me."
JUDY: She was just so scared of,
you know, how her family would react
if she really...
if she really wanted to talk about this.
KAREN: I said, "Judy, I feel very alone.
I don't have anyone to turn to."
Judy was my last chance.
Judy was the last chance I was willing to take at that point in my life.
"Remember that if you do get overwhelmed by your feelings,
you can write about them."
"I think you already know that writing can be excellent therapy,
"whether it's in letters to me or in your journal or whatever.
Keep getting those feelings out."
I didn't have anyone growing up
who gave me the permission to tell my story.
She saw a person who was hurting
and didn't give up on me.
"You are a survivor,
"and you should feel very proud that you are.
I am amazed by you."
That one small act of kindness...
the 20 minutes it took her
to write me a letter
in response to each of my letters...
saved my life.
Every time I had a birthday, I was writing her, "I had a birthday."
"I'm 16 now." "I'm 17 now."
"I'm 23 now." "I'm getting married now."
(laughing): "I'm having a child now." Right?
I have shared all of my milestones with her.
She rejoiced always in what I was doing now
and what new healthy relationships I had created.
JUDY: The letters kept me close
to all these kids of different ages,
but sometimes it was hard.
I'm not professionally trained,
and eventually, it sent me to a therapist.
You know, I remember her saying to me...
"You can't save all these kids, Judy.
Your job here is to be supportive."
"Dear Ms. Blume, I received your letter.
"Those few words meant a lot to me.
"But what made me happiest was that you signed it 'Judy.'
"So please permit me to sign this short note.
Love, Lorrie."
(chuckling)
LORRIE: At Bryn Mawr, where I went to college, when I was graduating,
there was some drama going on with my parents.
I called Judy, and I-I explained, and I said, "Can you come?"
And she and George very firmly said yes.
That was one of the kindest things anyone's ever done for me.
My classmates were like,
(laughing): "Why is Judy Blume at our graduation?
Does she have a relative here?"
"May 29, 1990.
"Dear Lorrie, George and I had a lovely time.
"You're exactly like your letters:
"intelligent, funny, warm and very lovable.
We loved being with you. Judy."
JUDY: George and I had gotten a summer home on Martha's Vineyard.
This is my favorite boat.
I spent 20 summers on the Vineyard.
My son Larry grew up, and I continued to write about Fudge...
...also based on my grandson now.
But I was ready to write about adult characters again.
PAMELA WALLIN: 22 books she's written,
and the latest one is called Summer Sisters.
It's all about friendship.
Summer Sisters is a story of growing up over 20 years.
Um, the girls go from being 12 in 1977
- to being 30 in 1995. - Mm-hmm.
WALLIN: And have you just, in a way, kept pace?
I mean, for the... for the young girls that were reading you 20 years ago,
now they want to read this?
- One hopes. (laughs) - I mean, do you... Yeah.
JUDY: I wanted to write about women
because I now knew things about being a woman
that maybe I didn't know when I started out
or I didn't want to know or I didn't want to acknowledge.
In the Unlikely Event is the book I was meant to write.
That story was inside me.
You know, it's based on something that happened
in my hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, when I was 14 years old.
REPORTER: Balls of flame mushroomed over the entire area.
It was almost an indescribable scene.
JUDY: When three planes fell from the sky
all within two months of each other.
Here I was back in the '50s,
a decade I said I couldn't stand and it was such a boring decade,
and here is this story
just waiting for me.
When I finished In the Unlikely Event,
I did know this is my last long book.
It's not that I don't have the imagination or that...
It's just that I can't sit in this room
for three more years or five more years.
I just don't have that. I want to be out.
I want to do... I want to be in the world.
♪ ♪
George and I went on a quest.
We decided, "Let's try to find a place to go for a month."
You know how you never know when you're gonna fall in love?
We fell absolutely in love with Key West.
I never planned for having a bookstore.
It was never in the fantasies at all.
But along came this fantastic opportunity,
and before I knew it, we had a bookstore.
(laughing)
It's been five glorious years, and I love it.
Poor Judy eats her lunch on a piece of paper towel.
MICHAEL NELSON: During the hurricane,
all my furniture, everything,
totally gone.
And, uh, so I got a new place,
and Judy gave me all these
pieces of furniture that she had.
And I always bring people in and I say, "This is Judy's desk. This is her chair.
This is her bed that she probably masturbated on."
(laughter)
It's like a little museum.
EMILY BERG: I have a lot of furniture from Judy, too, actually.
And I don't give them that tour, but maybe I should start.
I also have a desk that she...
JUDY: And two beds.
- And two beds. - MICHAEL: Two beds.
(light laughter)
Like, I've been teaching for... this is my...
this will be my 23rd year of teaching middle school,
and I feel like you capture in Blubber this truth about children
and the adults who ignore them, um, that is still true.
JUDY: We proudly have little signs taped up everywhere:
"We sell banned books."
Because again, you know what? It's happening today.
If you want to know where we are
as a country,
you want to know what conversations are bubbling
or where our disputes are, where we're at odds,
look at the banned books list.
REPORTER: The Katy Independent School District
is one of at least a dozen Texas districts that have removed books about race,
gender and sexual identity.
I don't want to spend my money on this filth, and it's in our libraries.
JASON REYNOLDS: We don't want to talk about race.
We still can't do it.
And that's why these books are on the banned list.
If you take my books off the shelves,
there are thousands and thousands of young people
who will no longer have access to that information,
just because you had a problem with it.
In the last four or five years, LGBTQIA issues
are at the top of the challenged and banned books lists.
It's saying my existence is so scary
and so monstrous
as that it is not acceptable
to show to children.
It is shocking, shocking, you know, that this is going on,
just as if time stood still
and we're back in the '80s.
Our culture is starting to resist the idea of sex education for young women.
And while it should, in some way, feel outdated,
the idea that you need to consult a book
in a kind of secretive way to find out what's going on with your own body,
in a lot of ways, it's becoming the reality again.
JUSTIN CHANDA: Forever... is one of the top banned books,
you know, year after year.
Margaret gets banned, uh, because it talks about bras.
In fact, I think that's where I met her
was at a banned books event.
I mean, the-the characters in my books do all the things that 17-year-olds,
um, seniors in high school do.
(laughs) And that same sort of honesty
that Judy Blume laid the path for 50 years ago.
(school bell rings)
PRINCIPAL (over intercom): All students, cell phones are not
to be used in this building for any reason.
The hallways are to be a calm environment,
free from shouting, pushing and any other reckless behavior.
Thank you, and have a great day.
I've read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself
and, um, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
This is Deenie.
This is my favorite book right now.
I like Blubber.
I've read Deenie and Tiger Eyes.
GIRL: My mom actually read a whole bunch of her books,
and I definitely remember, um, reading
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret when I was, like, very little.
CHANDA: Her books rank among the highest-selling books
every year, every year, every year.
A book like Forever... still sits alongside contemporary YA.
She completely changed the space of YA.
Beyond that, she certainly changed the way
female sexuality is talked about in the culture across the board.
DUNHAM: She allowed young women to be
as complicated and messy and dark and light and funny as we are.
Stop freaking the eff out.
KONKLE: I kind of think of Judy Blume's work as the foundation
and we've built a couple steps on top of it.
But I don't think that this work would be being made without it.
My agent pointed out to me that anything older than about ten years,
to children, is historical fiction.
Because they weren't around for it.
So it's how things were.
And I do think that Judy Blume is historical fiction.
It's how things were.
Some of the details feel very dated.
I think, specifically, in terms of gender
and how incredibly, like, down-the-line binary the characters are.
Almost none of the moms work.
Which, you know, Judy herself has talked about.
You know, if these books were written now, um, that wouldn't be the case.
I don't think that Judy Blume wrote her books to be timeless.
I think she wrote her books to be timely.
And they were so timely that they became timeless.
GIRL: Every kid still deals with this.
Kids are still insecure about, like, a lot of things till this day.
I was kind of bullied, like, because of my height
'cause I was kind of shorter than everybody else.
Sometimes it's tough for you to let out what you're thinking and what's going on
'cause it's so embarrassing for you that you just can't say it out loud.
Am I normal? Is it my fault?
Why am I this? Why am I that?
This book, um, actually helped... actually can help me with my puberty.
There's only one little detail that's a little bit different.
(laughing): All the girls in Judy's books are like,
"I wouldn't be caught dead in an undershirt at school.
What am I, a baby?"
And that is the one detail that my kids are like,
"What is the thing about undershirts?"
Also having to call them up, like, dial the phone. (chuckles)
It's like, I've never dialed, like, the, like, ringing phone, like, the...
I don't know how to put it. Like, the... when you have to, like, turn it, like...
What is there about your books, Judy Blume,
do you think, at the core, that so attracts so many young readers?
I think it has to do with character identification.
I mean, the kids will say to me,
"You don't know me, but you wrote this book about me."
And it has to do with feelings, because it's...
it's good to know, no matter how old you are,
that other people feel the same way.
Judy Blume, there are millions of kids who adore you, and I wish you good luck...
Looking back, it's emotional for me because...
I guess most emotional for me,
taking me back to that young woman I was
writing the books.
I don't know. How does it feel to be old?
I think maybe that's why I say it a lot.
To remind myself, "You are old."
(chuckling): Not a day goes by that I don't say to somebody,
"I'm 83. You know, I'm 83. I'm 83."
Like, why do I do that?
I think there's just an awareness.
You've reached, you know, on that line...
you've reached here, and...
...who knows how much longer you have?
But I don't feel old.
I still sometimes get asked in letters, "Are you 12 years old?
Are you a kid?"
I'm like, "Mm, yeah, part of me is."
♪ ♪
Yeah, I remember that.
I remember that haircut. That's the same haircut that I had.
That's good. That's good stuff.
Yeah, basically all the '80s.
Like, with the scrunchie and...
(sighs) Good stuff.
Also... (sighs) books.
(sniffs) I love, like, paperbacks.
REYNOLDS: So many Margaret covers.
This is the OG cover, right?
Yeah, this is the beginning.
This is the famous blonde girl who...
Who is she?
We-we don't know who she is.
And I literally remember, like, matching each character to her image
and her personality and how cool I thought the girl's ponytail was.
That... like, the fact that somebody is a good enough author
that the publishing company will go to the effort to make a window.
This book changed young adult lit forever.
Forever. (laughs)
♪ ♪
(music fades)