Book Review: Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl, I Learned from Judy Blume

In case you´re wondering, no, I didn´t write this book, but yes, I could have. Like so many others, I grew up on Judy Blume, and this book is a collection of essays from other writers who had the same experience. Not surprisingly, most of the essays were about the most controversial books, Deenie, Forever..., and Are you There God? It´s me, Margaret. (very little was mentioned of my personal favorite, Tiger Eyes. It´s a good thing that so few people were able to closely relate to a main character whose father was murdered in a hold-up in his own convenience store.)

During one essay about the BFF book Just as Long as We´re Together, one author writes about how she was essentially "dumped" by her best friend by not being invited to the wedding. She found out about the blessed event after the fact by a mutual friend. OMG!, I thought to myself as I read it, I know exactly how that feels! I found myself nodding along with the authors as they wrote about how their own experiences mirrored those of Blume´s characters, and how they went from Superfudge (I always loved that Peter and Fudge had a dog named Turtle) to Sally J. Freeman to hiding their copies of Forever... in their desks (can´t really relate to that, if I´m totally honest, I didn´t read Forever... until recently.) and finally to her adult fare, Smart Women, Wifey, and the best of the bunch, Summer Sisters. I remember reading Summer Sisters for the first time when I was 17, and spending Christmas with the family in Arizona (that´s when you know you´ve read something really great. You remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you read it.) and I remember thinking, this is the same woman who wrote The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo?! But despite the intial shock, Summer Sisters is one of the books I´ve read again and again. We all have that friend that we allow to come in and out of our lives, or that friendship that doesn´t really seem to make sense.

If you never read Judy Blume as a kid (and why on earth not?) I wouldn´t bother with this one, you won´t get the references. But if you grew up with Deenie and Margaret and Sally J., you won´t want to miss it.