A few weeks ago, we asked you, the JBC com­mu­ni­ty, to weigh in on the Judy Blume books that most affect­ed you. We were elat­ed to receive so many respons­es — and sur­prised to see a num­ber of over­laps. Read on to dis­cov­er which of Blume’s books you should (re)read first. And be sure to check out our inspi­ra­tion for this call: Rachelle Berg­stein’s new­ly released The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Child­hood for All of Us!

 

“Mar­garet was a sem­i­nal book in my life. I read it prob­a­bly when I was about nine or ten years old. Though I recall I had NO idea what she was talk­ing about with the pads and belts and what­not (gulp, glad that has changed!), I so relat­ed to that des­per­ate feel­ing of want­i­ng to grow up while at the same time just being whol­ly con­fused and try­ing to fig­ure out what LIFE was.” —Melanie, Geor­gia 


​“Although I had learned about peri­ods from my mom, and a lit­tle from school, nobody real­ly dis­cussed the social impact of puber­ty. I grew up in a very small town with the same group of girls from kinder­garten through high school; we were fair­ly iso­lat­ed and took our cue not to dis­cuss such mat­ters with the few pop­u­lar girls. Thank God for my girl­friends from tem­ple, who were more open to talk­ing about our peri­ods, boys, life, etc. We all read Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet and dis­cussed it at length. We all had our peri­od sup­plies ready and told each oth­er the moment it hap­pened! It was so won­der­ful to have a group of young women who could sup­port each oth­er through those tricky days of ear­ly wom­an­hood. We loved that Mar­garet was explor­ing Judaism and relat­ed to her won­der­ful grand­moth­er, whom we all adored. We joked about ​“We must, we must, we must increase our bust” while still ner­vous about hav­ing boys notice our chang­ing bod­ies. Mar­garet and her friends made it all seem nor­mal. Are You There God? was our teen Bible. 

I got my first peri­od one week before my bat mitz­vah. I became a woman in so many ways in such a short amount of time. It was scary, excit­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing, and yet I felt pre­pared thanks to Judy Blume. When I became a high school Eng­lish teacher, I was sad­dened to learn that the book had fall­en out of favor as old-fash­ioned. I bought numer­ous copies and had them in my class­room library. The girls end­ed up lov­ing the book, and I am hap­py to report every copy was ​‘per­ma­nent­ly bor­rowed.’ ” —Robyn, Cal­i­for­nia 


​“Since child­hood, books have been my nour­ish­ment and depend­able com­pan­ions. I spent my grade-school sum­mers bicy­cling to the Kings High­way branch of my Brook­lyn library. I actu­al­ly wor­ried that I had run out of good read­ing mate­r­i­al when­ev­er I com­plet­ed a good book. To this day I read and reread the final chap­ter slow­ly, savor­ing it as if it’s the last book on Earth. 

As a pre­teen, Are You There God? brought me a whole new lev­el of author appre­ci­a­tion after all the Nan­cy Drew, Hardy Boys, and oth­er fun and easy but mil­que­toast books I had grown up on. Sci­ence fic­tion and his­tor­i­cal fic­tion caught my inter­est at that time too (to this day my faves!). But Judy Blume’s open writ­ing spoke to me as no oth­er had, allow­ing me to real­ize that every­thing I was think­ing and dream­ing about was nat­ur­al, and that an enor­mous, nev­er-end­ing world would always be at my fin­ger­tips as I moved from YA to adult lit­er­a­ture.” —Miri­am, New York 


​“I remem­ber dis­cussing with my child­hood friends, Jew­ish and non-Jew­ish, what it felt like to have so many ques­tions about life.” —Robyn, Con­necti­cut 


​“I relat­ed to Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet because it tack­led mov­ing, puber­ty, and find­ing an under­stand­ing of one­self in an inter­faith house­hold. Judy Blume’s books made me feel safe, and under­stood, and like I was­n’t the only per­son to have gone through every­thing that was being thrown my way. Her char­ac­ters were my friends when I was mov­ing schools and had­n’t found my own yet. Even just think­ing about this is mak­ing me tear up right now! I still hold these sto­ries so dear, and I can’t wait to share them with my future kids.” —Julia, Cana­da 

 

“I read Dee­nie as a child and recent­ly revis­it­ed it. The book fol­lows thir­teen-year-old Dee­nie after she is diag­nosed with sco­l­io­sis. I, too, received this diag­no­sis at thir­teen, and under­went cor­rec­tive spinal surgery two years lat­er. Reread­ing the book as an adult, I real­ized how much Blume got right: the strange­ness of being fit­ted for a brace, the dread­ful­ness of actu­al­ly wear­ing it, the self-con­scious­ness that comes with being in an unwieldy teenage body. I also appre­ci­at­ed the nov­el­’s depic­tion of female plea­sure, how­ev­er brief it is. I’d bet that Dee­nie was one of the first chil­dren’s books to address both dis­abil­i­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty.” —Kyra, Penn­syl­va­nia 


​“Hon­est­ly, it was not a pos­i­tive impact. I had sco­l­io­sis and I found the whole book ter­ri­fy­ing. I also did not under­stand the por­tray­al of mas­tur­ba­tion and found it con­fus­ing and scary, cre­at­ing more ques­tions than it answered. It rein­forced mes­sages about beau­ty stan­dards instead of offer­ing me relief and insight into the oppres­sion that I was expe­ri­enc­ing.” 

 

“Read­ing For­ev­er was like read­ing Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About Sex and Love. In 1976, at the start of sixth grade, my best friends and I read every word, turned every page togeth­er. The love sto­ry between Kather­ine and Michael was far off in our futures. One after­noon, at my house, we stum­bled upon a word we did­n’t know and ran down­stairs to my mom in the kitchen, my friends screech­ing, ​‘Mrs. Fried­man, what’s semen?’ Four-plus decades lat­er and we still burst into gig­gles over this mem­o­ry.” —Jen­nifer, Israel 

 

“Read­ing Judy Blume was sub­lime­ly com­fort­ing. Her char­ac­ters felt how I felt, wor­ried about what I wor­ried about, and were real and smart and fun­ny. I read and reread them. And it is hard to over­state how much it mat­tered to me that some of them just hap­pened to be Jew­ish. All of these things made me feel less alone.” —Deb­o­rah, Eng­land 


​“When I owned a book­store, Blume was one of the most request­ed and most sug­gest­ed authors for younger read­ers. Her sto­ries were so impor­tant for them!” —Suzanne, New York 


​“Her books made me real­ize that I was­n’t alone, that oth­er young peo­ple were think­ing sim­i­lar thoughts as me and expe­ri­enc­ing bul­ly­ing, etc. It made me love read­ing even more. I also read Judy Blume’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, and hear­ing about her Jew­ish tra­di­tions helped spark my inter­est in Judaism. I read Anne Frank around the same time, so there were a num­ber of influ­ences. I even­tu­al­ly end­ed up con­vert­ing to Judaism.” —Sara, Aus­tralia 


​“I always loved to read, but Judy Blume’s books described peo­ple who were famil­iar to me, a world that was acces­si­ble and well known. The con­flicts were painful because they were real. And the books nev­er end­ed with a neat bow, just with a sense that things that had seemed awful at one time had a way of fad­ing away with time. Lessons are learned, peo­ple grow, per­spec­tive is gained.” —Ana, Ari­zona