The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us

A loving, well-researched tribute to Judy Blume: author, freedom-to-read advocate, mother, wife, and bookstore owner. Told in chronological fashion in 25 engaging chapters, GENIUS addresses second-wave feminism, Judy's own struggles with the cultural expectations around marriage and motherhood, and her writing journey; then, in the 1980s, the rise of book banning, with Judy's books frequently targeted, and today's right-wing book banning efforts.

Quotes/notes

"In children's books, since they became a thing at the beginning of the twentieth century as a separate market of book publishing, there's always been this battle between what kids want to read and what an adult thinks is good." (Roger Sutton, of The Horn Book, p. 148)

"When we show more elected Ronald Reagan and the conservatives decided that they would decide not just what their children would read but what all children would read, it went crazy." (Judy Blume in the Guardian, 2014, p. 166)

Authors League letter to the school board in Peoria, IL, in 1984 - signed by Madeleine L'Engle, Natalie Babbit, Uri Shulevitz, William Steig, and more - helped convince the board to reconsider their decision to pull three of Judy Blume's books from the school. (188)

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/11/us/peoria-ill-bans-3-books-from-school-librar...

"It's offensive to me that that book's offensive to you." (elementary school librarian Lauren Harrison, re: the picture book Our Subway Baby)(206)

[Comparing book banning to weeding is a false equivalency; weeding "is about unshelving titles that have been rendered irrelevant by the culture. Banning is about cutting off access to books that are contributing to current cultural conversations in the hopes that these conversations will stop") (208)

"[Books] can take you places that you've never been, can teach you how to do this or that...in those scenarios, why would you not want to read? Because you have to realize that there's something to this reading thing." (school librarian Julia Loving, 209) show less

Judy Blume wrote groundbreaking books for children and teens that normalized body-related subjects that were considered taboo, like masturbation, premarital sex, and, as memorably portrayed in [b:Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret|59365703|Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.|Judy Blume|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675288783l/59365703._SX50_.jpg|4121], "men-STROO-ation." This appreciation of her work is moderately interesting, but if you've seen the recent Judy Blume Forever documentary or even read the author's responses to correspondence from her fans in [b:Letters to Judy|480338|Letters to Judy|Judy show more Blume|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1223663884l/480338._SY75_.jpg|2023], you won't find much new information about her life and work. However, now that Blume's novels, as well as many others, are subject to censorship in selected public and school libraries, we need Judy's messages more than ever. The Genius of Judy is a timely reminder of why the fight to preserve access to these books is so urgent. show less

4.5 rounded up. I never read Judy Bloom, my mother would have been solidly on the side of the book banners. I think I'll get them for my daughters though. it's so smart to let kids explore tricky topics in literature so they can approach them socially with some education and maybe know how to better ask questions.