For many girls of my Gen-X generation, as we walked into the scary world of growing up we clutched a map that had a single cartographer: Judy Blume. She wrote the books that spanned from Freckle Juice to Forever– early chapter books to mature young adult, and she wrote about the secrets and desires we told only to our diaries.

With her guidance I would walk the path from the earliest chapter books through puberty (Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret) school conflicts, (Blubber), family conflicts (It’s Not the End of the World), racism (Iggie’s House), self-esteem and perception (Deenie), death (Tiger Eyes), even religious realities and the holocaust (Starring Sally J Freedman, as Herself).

 

I was so happy to find this book: Everything I needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume. Filled with stories by authors around my own age, every woman wrote of her own experience with Judy Blume, and just as I did when I first read Blume books, I was shocked to find myself again. In each anecdote, I found familiarity- I was that same girl that the author confessed herself to be, and the memories of how I felt as I read the books mentioned came rushing back to me. I began thinking again of one book that I returned to again and again, seeking answers that, from  no fault of Blume, would remain elusive.

The book that most fascinated me was not about my fellow girls, but about boys- a subject I had zero experience with and had hoped Judy Blume would guide me. In Then Again Maybe I Won’t the protagonist was a boy who found himself in a new neighborhood, a wealthy suburb different than his Jersey City roots. The main issue of the book was his spying on a neighbor girl while she undressed, and what Blume described as “nocturnal emissions”, and involved him messing up his sheets. I didn’t get it. I understood that there was something happening in his dreams and that the character seemed befuddled by why his sheets were wet- but I stayed confused. When I read this book when I was around 11, I remember going back and rereading lines, thinking that I’d missed the vital clue that would help me unlock the “something” that I knew I missed. Switch of metaphor- I couldn’t find Waldo no matter how hard I looked.

 

Looking back, I was barely stepping into my own puberty, and had lots to learn about myself. Whatever was going on with boys would just remain theoretical. I didn’t have brothers, my parents were divorced, the male body and whatever it did would be decades away for me to study and question. But I am glad I had the book to read- Blume helped me see that boys did not get off easy. We girls had periods and hair and breasts to deal with, and she said boys also had messy and confusing things happening to them. If the particulars stayed mysterious, it was enough to know that it wasn’t just us girls.

I am so grateful for Judy Blume. She gave me connections that I desperately needed when I felt alone, and provided a map I would follow into womanhood. Books that we read when we are children are not only those that hold us in the warmth and love of bedtime- the books we read invite us into wider worlds, even guide us down paths we feel compelled to walk.

Link to the amazon page for the book: Everything I Learned About Being a Girl, I Learned From Judy Blume: