On April 23rd Judy Blume fans can see the new “Judy Blume Forever” documentary on Amazon Prime.
Many kids have passed around the books she wrote like contraband, and now in Florida (and a few other red states) they again are being banned. She had battled censorship of her books during the 1980’s Reagan Era (Moral Majority whipped up a frenzy about this, blaming Satan of course), and now she has to battle banning again, 40 years later.
We’d want new Judy Blume books that would cover the current controversies regarding LGTBQ+ and Trans kids, but many authors currently writing about this had read the Judy Blume books as kids, so they have a great model for how to do this. And of course they are being banned too.
Teachers and librarians are being clued in to pay attention to this. This movie will likely prompt more kids to try and seek the help they are desperate to find. I really appreciate she’s popped back up in the public radar to point out how crappy banning books is to kids in need of good information. For decades she’s been an inspirational help to millions of kids and families, as well as teachers, librarians, and other helpers in contact with kids. Her 22 books covered many aspects of the life of children, especially girls, honestly, dealing with real feelings, needs, curiosity, bodily changes, love and futures, covering ages from elementary age through young adult.
I know one of the women who appears in the documentary and I was invited to see a pre-release showing with her. She had written Judy since elementary school due to abuse from a family member and the rest ignoring her. So many poignant stories of young kids desperately trying to find honest information and/or help from a caring adult. So many kept contact via letters into young adulthood and older. Judy wrote back to many kids. 100,000’s of thousands of letters came from kids seeking help from the one person they felt could understand them. Now all these are kept in a Harvard special collection.
