Judy Blume was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey as Judith Sussman on February 12, 1938 to dentist Rudolph Sussman and his wife Esther Rosenfeld. After graduating in 1956 from the all-girls’ Battin High School, she enrolled at Boston College, later transferring to New York University where she met and in 1959 married attorney John Blume. She graduated two years later with a bachelor’s degree in education.
The couple had a daughter, Randy Lee, in 1961, and a son, Lawrence Andrew, in 1963. Their marriage lasted 12 more years until they divorced in 1975. A year later, she married physicist Thomas A. Kitchens, but divorced in 1978. In 1987, she married nonfiction writer George Cooper, becoming close with his daughter by a previous marriage, Amanda. At one point, she wrote a Haggadah for her children.
Blume’s writing career began with courses at New York University, but it wasn’t until 1969 that her first book, One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, was published. Thereafter her children’s and Young Adult books came out nearly every year, among them: Iggie’s House; Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great; It’s Not the End of the World; Deenie; Blubber; Forever, which has been often banned for its sexual contact, and Tiger Eyes.
Moving from Young Adult books to those for Adults, she wrote Wifey; Smart Women; and Summer Sisters, the latter of which again was often banned because of its LGBTQ+ content. Blume’s fight against the book banners, led to her becoming active in the National Coalition Against Censorship. Her treatment of menstruation, masturbation, teen sex, and birth control in different books have prompted calls for their banning. In 2000, the Library of Congress named her a “Living Legend.”
Her books also have dealt with such subjects as coping with parents’ divorce and the death of parent. Forever, dealing with high school students who fall in love, was made into a TV movie starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Dean Butler. Her novel Fudge-a-Mania was adapted into a TV series Fudge, whose title character Farley Drexel “Fudge” Hatcher was played by Luke Tarsitano. In 2023, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret was released as a feature film starring Abby Ryder Fortson in the title role. It grossed $21.5 million worldwide.
Tomorrow, Feb. 13: Richard Blumenthal
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article