It may seem to some read­ers that acclaimed author Judy Blume is final­ly hav­ing her moment. But, as Rachelle Berg­stein explains in The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Child­hood for All of Us, that moment has been con­tin­u­ous. Blume’s nov­els for both chil­dren and adults have cap­tured essen­tial themes of sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism. As Berg­stein writes in the pref­ace, ​“Writ­ing cut­ting-edge books for kids, Judy Blume became the Sec­ond Wave’s secret weapon.” Focus­ing on sub­jects like men­stru­a­tion, moth­er­hood, divorce, and sex, Berg­stein argues that Blume was one of the first authors for chil­dren and young adults to strip away hypocrisy and cre­ate char­ac­ters who told the truth. She also explores a corol­lary of Blume’s career — cen­sor­ship — and her coura­geous stand against book ban­ning in any form. Once Blume com­mit­ted her­self to writ­ing, the gate­keep­ers of children’s books could not con­tain her.

Blume’s child­hood in New Jer­sey dur­ing and after World War II became the source mate­r­i­al for some of her books. Unlike Mar­garet Simon of Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet (1970), Blume was born to two Jew­ish par­ents. Yet like her hero­ine, she suf­fered from anx­i­ety and reached out to God for answers. The social lives of the ado­les­cent girls immor­tal­ized in the nov­el were also part of her own com­ing of age. In her more auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal book, Star­ring Sal­ly J. Freed­man as Her­self (1977), Blume incor­po­rat­ed her fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships and fears, as well as the Jew­ish milieu in which she was raised.

Berg­stein con­tex­tu­al­izes the rev­o­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of these books by com­par­ing them to ear­li­er, san­i­tized fic­tion for girls, in which first men­stru­al peri­ods, fam­i­ly ten­sions, and sex­u­al attrac­tion to boys did not exist. When books for old­er teens did include sex­u­al rela­tion­ships, dis­as­trous con­se­quences were the result. One of Blume’s most reviled — but also most pop­u­lar — nov­els, For­ev­er (1975), stars a teenage girl whose sense of inde­pen­dence sur­vives her first romance. She finds sex and love ful­fill­ing, but is also able to move on as her needs change.

Know­ing about sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism is key to under­stand­ing both Blume’s moti­va­tion and the obsta­cles she faced. She mar­ried young and enjoyed the ben­e­fits of eco­nom­ic priv­i­lege — yet, exact­ly as Bet­ty Friedan out­lined in The Fem­i­nine Mys­tique, Blume was intense­ly frus­trat­ed. Berg­stein is care­ful to not depict Blume as a vic­tim; her free time was part­ly enabled by her husband’s suc­cess, which gave her oppor­tu­ni­ties denied to work­ing-class women.

Blume’s tal­ent, per­sis­tence, and abil­i­ty to bounce back after set­backs ulti­mate­ly bore fruit. How­ev­er, even after she became an estab­lished author, crit­i­cism of her books was daunt­ing, some­times bor­der­ing on cru­el. Not only was she vil­i­fied by con­ser­v­a­tive cul­ture war­riors, but the lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment was often harsh. Some attacks were tinged with sex­ism, such as the one by a British children’s book author who com­pared her prose style to a shop­ping list.

Blume rede­fined fic­tion for mid­dle-grade and young adult read­ers, insist­ing that the whole range of their expe­ri­ence was appro­pri­ate mate­r­i­al for books. In Bergstein’s telling, this accom­plish­ment was noth­ing short of genius.