She's currently working on a new novel for adults, her first since 's bestselling Summer Sisters. The untitled novel is set in the 50s, partially, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Blume grew up, and sees her tackling again a topic which preoccupies her — young pregnancies, and young motherhood. One of the main characters has a baby right after high school, and never tells the father.
There was no abortion, you know. Yes, some girls got shipped to Aunt Betty's house in the country and came back without a baby, and some girls had a hasty marriage. Our parents didn't because they came of age during the depression, they had one, maybe two children later.
My mother was 34 when I was born, which today is nothing, but in my generation that would have been old. We rushed into marriage and having children before we had any idea what we were doing. When her American publisher announced publication of the new novel in summer , the news was greeted with rapture and covered by outlets from Time to the New York Times. An earlier New Yorker piece called her books "talismans that, for a significant segment of the American female population, marked the passage from childhood to adolescence".
Blume's younger fans have poured their hearts out to her for years — she even published a book of their letters, and had to go to counselling to learn "how to be supportive without feeling that I needed to save them".
Her adult fans recall her as the author who understood. She signed a copy of Deenie for me recently, and my joy was uncontained. The musician Amanda Palmer has even written a song about Blume: "You told me things that nobody around me would tell Margaret, bored, counting hats in the synagogue Palmer says she'd struggled for years to name her "influences", when asked by journalists, "and then it hit me: I totally forgot about Judy Blume.
As I traced myself back, I realised that she'd opened up all these emotional doors and windows that started off locked, and I'd taken it totally for granted.
It was such a eureka moment that I had to write her a song. And thanks to Twitter, she heard it. I cry pretty much every time I play it. Teasingly, Blume says right at the end of the interview that she's now planning, sort of, a memoir up until the age of 12; she's not, she ends by chuckling, "going to do a Philip Roth" and announce her retirement.
George is waiting. She heads off to enjoy London. Learn more. Judy Blume b. February 12, Photographer: Sigrid Estrada. Institution: Judy Blume.
In Brief. Family and Education. Becoming a Writer. Writing Style. Honors and Awards. Selected Works. Bradbury Press, Are You There God? New York: Macmillan, Freckle Juice. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.
New York: E. Dutton, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. Freedman as Herself. New York: G. Tiger Eyes. The Judy Blume Diary. New York: Yearling, It is about a sixth grader, Margaret, whose parents follow different religions; Christianity and Judaism. Thus, she could not develop any religious affiliation as a child but now it becomes important for her to adapt a single religion in her life. The book also addresses some of the regular and sensitive pre-teen issues.
Subsequent to working on general children and teenage problems in her novels, Blume steered the course of her writing toward more serious subject matter like adult reality and the concept of death. In , she published a novel Wifey targeting adult audience. The novel addresses the adult issue of extramarital affairs and open marriages. After attending the all-girls' Battin High School, Blume was forced to leave Boston University after just two weeks upon contracting mononucleosis.
They were married shortly after the death of her father in , and she graduated with a B. Having given birth to two children, daughter Randy and son Lawrence, by age 25, Blume sought to satisfy her creative urges by taking a writing course at NYU.
Following years of rejections, she became a first-time author when her illustrated children's book The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo was published in Blume followed with her first novel, Iggie's House , about an African American family that moves into a white neighborhood.
It's Me, Margaret , that firmly established her as a leading voice for younger readers. Focusing on a girl who wonders about the pending arrival of her period and her parents' competing faiths, Blume deftly tapped into her experiences from pre-adolescence to deliver an endearing, honest coming-of-age story.
Her subsequent books Deenie and Forever… touched on the similarly sensitive but universal issues of body image and teenage sexuality. Freedman as Herself , while geared toward younger readers, nonetheless stood out for stark portrayals of family strife and childhood angst.
By , Blume had grown bored with her suburban life and divorced her husband. She met physicist Thomas Kitchens and quickly remarried, but by the end of the decade, she was divorced again.
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