In Tiger Eyes , Blume relates the story of how fifteen-yearold Davey adjusts to her father's murder. Hailed by many critics as Blume's finest work for her successful handling of a complicated plot, Tiger Eyes includes such issues as alcoholism, suicide, and violence.
Reviewers commended Blume for her honesty, warmth, and wit, praising her keen observation of childhood and strong appeal to children. Her books for younger children, such as Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Blubber, and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, deal with problems such as getting along with one's brothers and sisters, establishing self-confidence, and having no friends.
Books for young adults, such as Are You There, God? Blume's discussion of sexuality reflects her ability to target the issues that most interest young people. She explained to John Neary of People, "I think I write about sexuality because it was uppermost in my mind when I was a kid: the need to know, and not knowing how to find out.
My father delivered these little lectures to me, the last one when I was 10, on how babies are made. But questions about what I was feeling, and how my body could feel, I never asked my parents. Although Blume's work is consistently popular with readers, it has often been the target of criticism. Some have charged that her readable style, with its focus on small detail, lacks the depth to deal with the complicated issues that she raises. Other reviewers point out that the problems of her characters are often left unresolved by the end of the book.
Many critics, however, think it is to Blume's credit that she does not settle every problem for her readers. As a result of Blume's popularity, she began to receive hundreds of fan letters every week, some of them asking her advice on different issues.
The resulting book was meant for both children and adults to help them better communicate with each other. Blume feels so strongly about the lack of communication between children and their parents that she used the profits from sales of Letters to Judy, among other projects, to help finance the KIDS Fund, which she established in Over the years Blume's writing has matured and her audience has expanded with each new book.
While she wrote for younger children at first, as her audience aged she began writing for teenagers and later for adults. Her first adult novel, Wifey, deals with a woman's search for more out of life and marriage.
Smart Women finds a divorced woman trying to deal with single motherhood and new relationships. Summer Sisters examines the relationship between two adult women whose friendship has grown apart since the teenage years of their lives.
Blume enjoys writing for all audiences: "I wish that older readers would read my books about young people, and I hope that younger readers will grow up to read what I have to say about adult life. I'd like to feel that I write for everybody. As a result of the controversy surrounding some of her books, Blume also increased her activities opposing censorship the act of examining materials such as books or films and removing anything considered objectionable or obscene and supporting intellectual freedom.
In she edited Places I Never Meant to Be, a collection of stories written by people whose work was the target of censorship efforts. Having divorced her first husband, Blume lives in Key West, Florida, with her second husband, George Cooper, also a writer. Judy Blume continues to write for children and adults. She is also involved in a new project adopting her earlier children's novels into home videos. It's Me, Margaret , that firmly established her as a leading voice for younger readers.
Focusing on a girl who wonders about the pending arrival of her period and her parents' competing faiths, Blume deftly tapped into her experiences from pre-adolescence to deliver an endearing, honest coming-of-age story.
Her subsequent books Deenie and Forever… touched on the similarly sensitive but universal issues of body image and teenage sexuality. Freedman as Herself , while geared toward younger readers, nonetheless stood out for stark portrayals of family strife and childhood angst.
By , Blume had grown bored with her suburban life and divorced her husband. She met physicist Thomas Kitchens and quickly remarried, but by the end of the decade, she was divorced again. Such experiences fueled the creation of more mature material, and in she published Wifey , about a repressed housewife. Blume added another adult novel with Smart Women in , but she mainly continued writing for younger audiences.
She revisited her Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing characters with the sequel Superfudge , and mined the painful memory of losing her father for Tiger Eyes Despite the overwhelming popularity of her stories, Blume found herself a target for censors who sought to have her sensitive material removed from bookshelves.
As a result, Blume joined the National Coalition Against Censorship to speak out in favor of intellectual freedom. She also edited the book Places I Never Meant to Be , a collection of short stories by authors who had also felt pressure from censors. Blume teamed up with her son Lawrence, a filmmaker, to write and produce the screen version of Tiger Eyes.
Released in , it was the first major adaptation of one of her books. In the spring of , Blume published her first novel in 17 years, In the Unlikely Event. Freckle Juice. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. New York: E. Dutton, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. Freedman as Herself. New York: G. Tiger Eyes. The Judy Blume Diary. New York: Yearling, Smart Women. The Pain and the Great One. Bradbury, Danbury, CT: Grolier, Summer Sisters. Double Fudge. In the Unlikely Event. New York: Knopf, Contemporary Authors , New Revision Series.
Contemporary Literary Criticism. Cooper, George. Telephone interview with author, January 10, Current Biography Decter, Naomi. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Sutton, Roger. Weidt, Maryann N. Presenting Judy Blume. Woodbridge, CT: Twayne Publishers, Author website. More on Judy Blume See Also:. See Also:.
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