Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume

"I wonder if Judy Blume really knows how many girls' lives she affected.""

Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume is a fantastic collection of essays from multitudes of writers, talking about Judy Blume and her novels and how they affected her life. Growing up I was a huge Judy Blume fan (although I have yet to read what she's probably most well known for,'Are you there God, it's me Margaret') and reading through these essays only brought back all the wonderful memories I had of reading Blume's works for the first time. It really makes me wanna go find a copy of Forever or Tells of a Fourth Grade Nothing to dig into.

Overall this collection made my little English Major/writer heart swoon. Not only is it an examination of some of my favorite works, but it also tells how the writing changed people, helped them, and taught them a lesson in some way. And that's just the most wonderful thing, when someone takes something out of writing. I'm a huge fan of reader's response to writing, and so I loved reading through these essays. I felt like I was in some sort of book club dedicated to Judy Blume where we were all sitting around sipping tea and discussing how shocking it was for us to first read about Deenie masturbating or Katherine having sex.

Even though I'm a generation or two behind most of the women in here, and behind the Judy Blume empire itself, I still relate to most of the stories. Judy Blume was one of the names I most sought out in my elementary and middle school libraries, and when I couldn't find them (mostly because they were banned) I would look for her in the town library. And I really think this book felt like a big thank you note to here. A thank you note for being such a wonderful woman and writer.

Fin.

-Keshia