"Are you there God? It's me, Margaret. Gretchen, my friend, got her period. I'm so jealous God. I hate myself for being so jealous, but I am. I wish you'd help me just a little. Nancy's sure she's going to get it soon, too. And if I'm the last I don't know what I'll do. Oh please God, I just want to be normal." In 1970, when Judy Blume wrote these words in her best- selling book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, she never would have imagined today's movement for a "family friendly library." While Judy Blume says her books are not meant to be message books, people who are part of a movement called "the religious right" created a pamphlet called "How to Rid your Schools and Libraries of Judy Blume Books." They feel she is sending a dangerous message by talking openly about subjects like menstruation, teenage sexual feelings and masturbation.

Recently, Teen Voices had tea and cookies with Blume in her roomy New York apartment and talked about writing, censorship, and the first time we discovered "our special place." We also helped her come up with ideas for songs that would be playing in a chapter of her soon to be published novel about a lifelong friendship between two women, beginning when they were twelve and ending when they are thirty.

The fifty-eight-year-old author grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she attended an all-girls public high school, "which we complained bitterly about then," she said, "but I think that gave us more of a voice." She used her voice in all areas: she danced, sang, painted and was the features editor of her high school newspaper. She was always thinking of stories, and she made up "soap operas in [her] head." Blume recalled, "I was always a writer, but the stories were just inside my head. I used to make them up as a kid bouncing a ball against the wall. I never wrote them down."

Blume began writing stories down when she was a young woman at home with two preschool age children. Despite the social pressures of the fifties to deny your feelings and be a good wife and mother, Blume felt the need to do something creative so she picked up a pencil and paper and started to scribble.

From perfect daughter to perfect wife, Blume was married when she was a junior in college and had two children by the time she was twenty-five. "I think everyone should have to take a course [in parenting]," she said. "They shouldn't just be allowed to be a parent. It's a big thing to become a parent. There are so many kids who just have babies and they don't know what they are doing. I didn't know very much about being a parent. None of us did." When she started writing, her husband couldn't have cared less. "Feminism came late to suburbia," Blume said. "I lived on a street with thirty houses and not one women worked. I didn't fit in. I knew I didn't fit in. And maybe that's when I stopped trying so hard."

This desire to be accepted is a big theme in Blume's books. And that is one reason her characters are so universal (her books have been translated into sixteen languages). Virtually every young woman wants to fit in, wants to be liked. In Blubber, Jill, the narrator of the book, teases and hurts their large classmate Linda in order to gain her friend Wendy's approval.

Becoming a young woman in a culture that does not encourage open discussion of our bodies and sexuality is another experience that most girls share. Just as Margaret, the narrator of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, feels like something is wrong with her because she hasn't gotten her period (and she is obsessed with wanting to develop breasts), girls are usually anxious about the physical changes of adolescence. These things never change. Blume maintains, "First experiences are still first experiences. It doesn't matter if it's 1900 and you're getting your first period or 1996 and you're getting your first period. It's still exciting or scary or whatever it is to you."

These first experiences help to create Blume's characters. For a long time she got very scared when people asked her where she got her ideas. "I thought if I figured it out I would never get another idea," she said. She shared that Sally, in Starring Sally F. Freedman as Herself, most resembles Blume as a child. Sheila in Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great has all of Blume's childhood fears and insecurities. Blubber came out of an incident in her daughter's fifth grade classroom. ("She would come home at night and talk about it at the dinner table. She was the quiet, shy person who watching this happen.")

Her characters still remain close to her. She recently had a formal dinner birthday party for her fictional character Margaret (who just turned twenty). Besides inviting everybody who was involved with the book, Blume also invited some of her old friends from sixth grade!

Her ability to understand growing pains has made Blume a best-selling author. Even though the majority of her characters are white and middle-class, millions of young people relate to their fears about growing up. For example, Margaret's mother is a painter, and even though many mother can't afford to do unpaid work at home, we still understand Margaret's desire for breasts.

Her characters mean so much to so many people that Blume is flooded with 1,000 letters a month from young and old fans. Some of the young people who write to her are seriously troubled and are reaching out for help. In her book, Letters to Judy Blume, Blume shares her own memories and experiences that relate to the topics mentioned in these letters. She also provides resources for young people to get help.
Blume is very active with the National Coalition Against Censorship, which allows her to fight for the freedom to choose what you want to read. "America has more problems with issues of censorship than any other country where my books are published, which, I think, is pathetic," she said. "Forever frightened people because here's a woman who enjoys sex- who enjoys her own sexuality." The American Library Association recently gave Blume a lifetime achievement award and honored her book Forever, saying that teens can still relate to the book twenty years later. Despite these efforts, Blume knows that some kids will "still have to hide [their] books under their mattress because their parents will never accept them."

Blume advises Teen Voices readers who want to be published to keep writing: "The more you write, the more you learn, the better you get. And that helps you become a professional writer."