Attention Book Banners: There is no faster way to get your child to search out for a book you don't want them to read than by attempting to ban it.This book introduced me to so much in life. It is about a girl in the 1970s who is experiencing love for the first time and all the things that go with it, teen pregnancy, drugs, peer pressure... It was the first place I heard about Planned Parenthood and birth control. The love story was the greatest of all.
I passed the book on to everyone I knew, including my cousins. I have one younger sister and 6 girl cousins. We all grew up together and we are all close in age, stair stepped--one year apart. It quickly became a right of passage for girls in my family. When you hit 8th grade you could read the book. I remember getting a call from a younger cousin begging to read the book before 8th grade. Hilarious, since she could have read it without telling anyone, which is what I would have done. I am a bit of a Judy Blume pusher, I even had my 27 year old roommate read the book a few years ago.
On Saturday, we went directly to the book sales tent on the Mall to buy an additional copy of the book, I had brought along my own personal copy as well. A few years back I had to purchase another copy because the small, hardcopy I had from middle school, which I kept and paid for on the last day of school, had gotten lost in one of my several moves in college. Judy Blume was not scheduled to start signing until 11:30am, but I knew the line would be insane well before that time. So, my boyfriend and I went and stood in line. By the time she started, we were in the third line of six. As the classy and gracious woman she is, she started about 20 minutes early.
Standing in front of someone who has such an impact on the woman I have become, but have never met was euphoric. The two hours in line was well worth it. And I will continue my own tradition and continue to read the book every summer.
Thank you Judy Blume.
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