The Beloved Judy Blume

4:49Josh Clark:Right. Yeah. Get some support.

4:52Chuck Bryant:He didn't really everybody is what I'm trying to say.

4:55Josh Clark:Okay.

4:55Chuck Bryant:I think you make a great point though, Chuck. Like I think it's, whether it's normal or not, I feel like it was great that we read those books. They were great books to start with. But also like it's just so rare for an adult to have that level of insight into what it's like to be a kid growing into, well, an adolescent again. Right. That's just people have memories of that. I have memories of it. But the the vibe, the feeling and being able to convey it again, that is long gone.

5:27Josh Clark:Yeah, I totally agree.

5:29Chuck Bryant:So she was good at what she did. And she was a trailblazing pioneer of of the first kind.

5:38Josh Clark:Yeah, totally. And when you say was Judy Blume amazingly is still with us in her late 80s, living down in Key West. But I think she's basically given up writing. She hasn't put out a book in a while. She does run a bookstore down in Key West, which I would love to go to sometime.

5:56Chuck Bryant:I wish I had known the one time I went to Key West because I definitely would have popped in to see her.

6:01Josh Clark:Yeah. So today we salute Judy Blume. And I guess let's go back to her childhood. Sure. Because she was born Judith Marcia Sussman on February 2nd, 1938 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, just outside of New York and grew up in a pretty just normal middle class Jewish family. Her dad was a dentist. Her mom was a homemaker. And she, you know, seemed to have a, you know, I was about to say a happy life, but she was a fraught kid about some stuff, but not because she had like some awful life. It was a pretty normal life. But a lot of angst, it seems like.

6:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and fairly well earned, I feel like. Yeah, for sure. But not because her family dynamic was screwed up. It was like her father was her confidant in her entire childhood. Sounds like a really good father. I didn't get the impression that her mom was anything terrible, but I think her father played a more prominent role.

7:00Josh Clark:Yeah, I think so, too.

7:01Chuck Bryant:But what her mom gave her was the gift of loving to read, which is, man, there are a few gifts you can give a kid better than that, you know?

7:10Josh Clark:Yeah, no kidding. And I know you and I have talked about this privately, but, you know, when Ruby was diagnosed with dyslexia, we were both as avid readers just, you know, sort of afraid that meant she wouldn't have that joy. And she's gotten over it to the point where she's an avid reader, and it just makes us so happy. And you always wonder what your kid's going to be like. And when I was reading about young Judy Blume making up stories, like life stories and backstories for her dolls and play things and creating characters and scenarios, like Ruby does a lot of that stuff. And I'm always wondering if, like, you know, she writes stories and stuff like is that her path?

7:47Josh Clark:And like, who knows? But, you know, just like Judy Blume, they both had these active or have these active kind of make believe lives, which I think is super cool and healthy and awesome. Yeah.

8:01Chuck Bryant:The thing that stuck out to me was that she would take piano lessons. And then while she was practicing the piano herself, she in her head, she was teaching imaginary students like characters.

8:12Josh Clark:I love that.

8:13Chuck Bryant:She was giving them piano lessons. Yeah. And, you know, that's pretty cool in and of itself. She actually kept a journal, a notebook to chart their progress. The imaginary student she was teaching progress in her notebook. Like, that's how refined her imagination was as far as character development goes as a kid.

8:31Josh Clark:Yeah, that's super cool. And that reminded me, and again, not to just keep bringing Ruby into it, but I know you're a fan, so you don't mind. But when I took her to her first Hawks game, when she was like eight or nine, maybe, she sat there and I don't think I've told this before, but I looked and she brought her little notebook like she always does, just in case she gets bored. And she was keeping notes. And finally, it was like, what are you noting? and she had noted all the players and all of their shoes and what brand and what color shoes they had and what number they were and everything. And I just thought, what an interesting thing to do.

9:07Yeah.

9:08Chuck Bryant:I mean, I was never into that kind of thing. Um, so I, I, yeah, I, I feel like I'm definitely looking at it from the outside in.

9:15Josh Clark:Yeah. I just, you know, when you're a parent, you're always like, what does that mean? And like, maybe one day I'll look back and go like, it all makes sense now or whatever. Sure. Maybe she'll be in inventory or something. Yeah. What's it called when you manage? Logistics? Yeah, logistics.

9:35Chuck Bryant:She'll be in charge of logistics of moving basketball players around the country.

9:39Josh Clark:Hey, great.

9:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's cool. That's a great story. And yeah, I can't quite get it either. I mean, is it like a calming thing? I don't know. I have no idea. Well, let me know when you figure it out. because I'm interested.

9:52Josh Clark:It'll be in like 20 years probably.

9:54Chuck Bryant:So even though Judy Blume was like, she came up with characters and had a very rich internal life as a kid, she apparently never particularly aspired to be a writer. She ended up wanting to find essentially like a creative outlet later on, as we'll see. But as a kid, that wasn't, she wouldn't like, that's what I'm going to be as a writer. And so that comes later. in between then and now, but the opposite. So now would be while she was a child, then would be as she's grown up a little more.

10:32Josh Clark:Oh, man.

10:33Chuck Bryant:You said that she had a kind of a fraught childhood. And as a result of that, she definitely suffered from anxiety as a kid. And this is like 1950s anxiety. So like the real deal kind where you saw like a psychoanalyst sometimes.

10:46Josh Clark:Yeah, certainly starting out in the 40s when you're a little kid, especially a Jewish American kid and World War II was going around there was a big preoccupation in her family and you know every probably Jewish American kid's life about what was going on overseas afraid that could happen to them and their family that kind of thing and then really this is so sad she was always just worried about her father dying because a couple of her uncles died when they were younger in their early 40s of heart attacks I guess heart failure and she was just always worried about her dad and, you know, doing kid stuff like, you know, making a deal with God, like, hey, if I ace this test, it'll help my dad live.

11:27Josh Clark:And just it's just so sort of heartbreaking to hear that stuff.

11:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And if that sounds a little familiar, then you probably have read Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret.

11:36Josh Clark:Yeah.

11:37Chuck Bryant:So, yeah, that was a big deal. Like that kind of guided her outlook. And that's a lot to worry about as a little kid, right? Totally.

11:45Josh Clark:Yeah.

11:46Chuck Bryant:So another thing I have, remember I said her dad was like one of her biggest, most prominent figures in her entire life as a kid. There were two years where she and her mom and brother moved to Miami Beach because her brother had suffered some sort of chronic illness, I believe. And they were like, go to Miami. Apparently the 110 % humidity will do you good. Yeah. And her father stayed back in Elizabeth, New Jersey because he was a dentist. So he had to stay dentisting. Yeah. And that separation apparently was so significant that she developed an obsessive compulsive disorder. Not only would she, like you said, kind of make deals with God, she would, you know, maybe turn a doorknob handle X number of times.

12:34Chuck Bryant:And as long as she remembered to do that, her father would stay alive, like that kind of stuff. Again, we're talking about a kid who's less than 10 years old.

12:42Josh Clark:Yeah, that's a lot to take on. It just made me real sad to hear that. But she also had a few. And, you know, as we'll see, she wrote a lot about stuff that she knew, either places where she lived or about things that were, you know, like you said, and are you there, God, it's me, Margaret, kind of writing about that. She also wrote later in life about a family who experienced these three plane crashes sort of near their house that affected their household. And that really happened to her, right? Yeah.

13:12Chuck Bryant:Over the course of 58 days, less than two months, there were three separate plane crashes from the Newark airport, which apparently was like right there. The runways were pointed essentially at Elizabeth. And a hundred people died from those three crashes, 11 of which were like neighbors, friends and neighbors, like town folk from Elizabeth who had been on the ground in the wrong place at the wrong time.

13:40Josh Clark:Yeah. So that's obviously going to, you know, color a young kid's psyche, you know.

13:45Chuck Bryant:For sure. I mean, what are the odds of something like that happening? I guess it was bad enough that they closed the Newark airport for a year and rebuilt the runway so that they weren't pointed at Elizabeth anymore.

13:58Josh Clark:Yeah, that's that's terrible.

14:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So all those things together certainly like shaped her childhood, her pre-adolescence. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And then as she like kind of grew up, like her life was pretty normal 1950s, early 1960s type life. Although she was a little more on the alternative side. It looks like it sounds like she was a bit of a beatnik.

14:22Josh Clark:Yeah, I think she gravitated towards that, like when she graduated and she graduated, you know, high school at the top of her class and then went to NYU. And then there in the 50s at NYU, it sounds like she was definitely kind of slanted toward that bohemian culture and drawn to the beatnik types.

14:37Chuck Bryant:Yes, he was hanging with Llewellyn Davis.

14:41Josh Clark:Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take an earlier break. It seems like a good college seems like a good breaking point to me. Oh, I agree. All right. We'll be right back.

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16:39Chuck Bryant:So we're back. Chuck and Judy Blume is stuck in college because we took an ad break. and we're going to dislodge her. She's a junior. It's 1959. She meets a guy named John Bloom. She was 21 at the time. He would have been 27. He was already like well out of school, established himself as a lawyer. And he said, hey, toots, how about we get married? And she liked that idea. So they got engaged and they got married that year. Sadly, very, very sadly, I'm sure this hit her quite hard. Her father wasn't there to walk her down the aisle because like a month before the wedding, he died from a heart attack.

17:19Chuck Bryant:He wasn't early 40s, but he was early mid 50s, which is still very, very young.

17:25Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, to see your fear realized like that, like the one thing that she was worried about, specifically the heart attack, too, must have been devastating. So she gets married in 1961. She graduated from NYU with a degree in early childhood education. and the plan was to sort of, you know, you mentioned earlier she didn't want to be a writer necessarily and, you know, one of the big reasons because it is in the 1940s and early 1950s when she was a kid, that just wasn't an avenue that was as open to young women. It's a big reason that S.E. Hinton kept the initials S.E. Hinton when she wrote The Outsiders and all those books, you know.

18:06Chuck Bryant:I didn't know S.E. Hinton was a woman.

18:09Josh Clark:Are you serious?

18:10Chuck Bryant:Yeah, dead serious. Yeah.

18:12Josh Clark:I thought it was a teenage girl when she wrote the outsiders.

18:16Chuck Bryant:I had no idea. Wow. Yeah. I thought that was Steven Eadie Hinton.

18:23Josh Clark:That's why she did it. I mean, it worked, I guess she was like, I got to be able to fool Josh Clark.

18:27Chuck Bryant:No, but I mean, like I had no idea. This is literally the first time I'm hearing that. It's not even like, Oh, that vaguely rings a bell. I have never heard that in my entire life. Well,

18:37Josh Clark:there you have it. Yeah. She was a teenage girl in high school when she wrote the outsiders.

18:41Chuck Bryant:That's really cool.

18:41Josh Clark:But again, that's why she kept the name S.E. Hinton, because just publishing wasn't so open to young women writing books. So that's why Judy Blume didn't. And when she was graduating college, she was just sort of on that track. She was like, I'm going to get my degree. I'm going to get married, which I already did before I graduated. I'm going to have kids and be a homemaker. And within a couple of years of graduating, she had a daughter named Randy Lee and then a son named Lawrence Andrew and was, you know, very happily, it seems, back in the New Jersey suburbs. while her husband was attorneying.

19:14Chuck Bryant:Yes. So I had said, though, that she started writing because she was like, I need to do something else besides just raise kids and sit at home and dust. That just was not enough to fulfill her as a person. So once both of her kids were in preschool, she was like, I'll write some books for my kids or at least my kids' friends if the kids don't like it. She started creating picture books, essentially. The first one she came up with, or at least the first one, her first published book, was a children's picture book called The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo. Yeah. Which is a great, great children's book name.

19:55Chuck Bryant:But that didn't come like easy. That wasn't like a, you know, first try and she got her big break.

20:02Josh Clark:yeah i mean it's i think she went a couple of years like two two and a half years getting you know rejection letter after rejection letter um i think they dug up who helped us with this one uh julia yeah julia found that she was getting like six no letters per week uh before she became like an overnight success you know that's how the the media like tends to view those things But it seems like the big turning point was when she took a continuing ed class at NYU in the late 60s, like a writing class for like tween writing and teen writing. And she told NPR a few years ago that it was like such a monumental thing for her to like to know that she was going to leave every Monday, leave her family, go to the bus to New York City.

20:49Josh Clark:And like her husband was going to feed the kids and she wasn't going to be home until later that night. And just knowing she had that creative outlet really freed her up mentally, I think.

20:58Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

20:58Josh Clark:And led to that children's book and then eventually led to the publishing of her first novel, Iggy's House.

21:05Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it was a children's book, I guess maybe young adult book about a it's from the viewpoint of a little white girl named Winnie who lives in a neighborhood where her best friend has just moved and a black family moves into the neighborhood. and it's all about the racial tensions that develop white flight. But it's rather than Judy Blume trying to make it from the viewpoint of the little girl from the black family that just moved in. I think she very wisely did it from the viewpoint of this, you know, little white girl who's looking at it from the outside and was kind of innocently trying to figure out what the problem was, what was going on.

21:49Chuck Bryant:And this was 1970 when it was published. And this is not the kind of book that children were finding in the library at the time by any means.

22:00Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So that's her first one published in 1970 as far as the novel goes. And then right out of the gate, her follow-up book, again, also in 1970, was Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. Wow. So, I mean, can you just imagine starting your career out with a stone-cold classic like that? uh, it's, it was eventually made into a movie that was actually pretty good. I know she, um, yeah, it wasn't bad. Um, you know, it's hard when you have such a beloved book from your childhood. And I think that's why she waited so long, uh, you know, overtures for years and years and years to like decades to try and get it made into a film.

22:38Josh Clark:And she always said, no, I think she finally found, you know, that it was time and it turned out pretty good. I'm waiting and, you know, Ruby saw it and I'm waiting for her to want to read these books. Um, cause we, we got them all like,

22:47Chuck Bryant:you know ready at the gate waiting for they're just idling in the bookshelf yeah yeah they're they're ready um i didn't see it i saw it had a 7.3 on imdb which is definitely respectable and 99 on rotten tomatoes so yeah you're not the only one you thought was pretty good um so this book that comes out let's talk about are you there god it's me margaret for a second okay um the reason we referred to judy bloom as a trailblazer is because she was she was one of the first people writing this kind of book for this age group. S.E. Hinton, her book, The Outsiders, takes place among high schoolers. Same with like The Chocolate War by Robert...

23:35Ludlum?

23:36Chuck Bryant:Yeah, Robert Ludlum's Chocolate War. And then also there's another one called The Cat Ate My Gym Suit by Paula Danziger. that was fairly, all of them had to do with ninth graders or up, right? Yeah. She's writing about like 11-year-olds. It's going through the beginnings of what high schoolers are now dealing with, right? And the only person who beat her was S.E. Hinton from what I could tell. I think The Outsiders came out in 1967. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret came out in 1970. And again, it was just totally different from other books for kids at the time.

24:14Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, you know, kids' books are still like this in a lot of ways, although there's a lot more variety now, thankfully. But back then it was kind of like you present a big problem. Maybe there's a moral issue or something. And there's some big grand solution that teaches a big grand lesson. And she was like, you know what? It's not that easy and it's not that clean to grow up and black and white. So like I'm going to write books about how messy it is and how maybe it's just a struggle sometimes. And, you know, there's just a lot of realism in her books of like what it was really like to be an adolescent.

24:52Josh Clark:And, you know, critics liked them right away. The buying public loved them. I think it was in Are You There God was a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times book review. Outstanding Book of 1970 and just kind of launched her right out of the gate, you know?

25:10Chuck Bryant:For sure. Yeah. And I saw it also really took off when it came out in a trade paperback version in 1972 at a price that like younger kids or audience could afford. Oh, yeah. They didn't have to ask their parents to buy it for them anymore.

25:24Josh Clark:Right. Right.

25:25Chuck Bryant:So one of the things that that Judy Blume is credited with is essentially approaching adolescence, approaching not just menstruation, Chuck, but monarchy. Remember that? Yeah. Monarchy used to be like a guest character, a recurring guest character on early stuff you should know, weirdly enough.

25:46Josh Clark:Yeah, it's just a good trivia word.

25:49Chuck Bryant:For sure. But she approached it as like, it's a good thing. This is exciting. Like her characters are like, hurry up. I want to hurry up. And one passage that's very, very famous is when Margaret and her friends who all collectively make up the preteen sensations. It's their little secret club where they get together and talk about this stuff. One of them has the idea that they want to basically grow breasts, I guess is the best way to put it. And so one of them suggests they move their elbows back and forth alongside of their, like they're basically pumping. And while you do that, you have to say, I must, I must, I must increase my bust.

26:31Chuck Bryant:Classic. I didn't know that came from that. I always associate that with the Lords of Acid. Remember that song? Oh, yeah. I had no idea that Jade For You from Lords of Acid was a Judy Blume fan and was citing Are You There God? It's Me Margaret.

26:48Josh Clark:Pretty cool. And Essie Hinton was a teenage girl when she wrote The Outsiders.

26:51Chuck Bryant:I'm just finding out all sorts of big stuff.

26:54Josh Clark:Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, monumental book right out of the gate. She is, at the same time this is going on, you know, kind of playing this housewife role. But again, realizing like, you know, I don't know if that was the life for me. I got married when I was young. I never had sort of the freedom and adventure that I longed for in her life. And she said, you know, there was a quote where she said, for 16 years, writing saved me and my marriage. But by the mid 70s, the rules had changed. So by 1975, she's like, you know, I think I want a divorce. And she did that. She divorced her first husband, moved to New York.

27:33Josh Clark:and then a year later married a physicist named Thomas Kitchens. They were only married for about four years, but they had a pretty adventurous life. They lived in London and in New Mexico. Right.

27:45Chuck Bryant:I think at Los Alamos. Oh, okay. So also by 1975, when she decided to get divorced from her first husband, the lawyer, she had put out 10 books between 1970 and 1975.

28:02Josh Clark:Pretty amazing.

28:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Basically, almost all the ones that you and I read came out in that first like 10 year spurt. Like she just wrote classic bestselling kids books just right out of the gate. It's just really cool how much she was able to do, how much she was able to just connect with little kids. I still don't get it. Like I do not understand how an adult can do that. I'm just in awe of it.

28:27Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. I know her 1975 book Forever is not one that I read, but that's a very big book for Emily. And I know a very big book for a lot of like probably girls of all generations, but Gen X girls in particular, because that was the one where she had kind of been building up to, you know, you know, talking about prepubescent stuff and adolescence and puberty. And then finally in forever, it's like finally a character that wants to try and have sex for the first time. And Emily is just like, oh, man, like to read that book as a kid, it was like a really big deal.

29:02Chuck Bryant:Yes. And the book itself, I've seen it described as essentially a self-help manual for having safe sex because she follows the main character, Catherine, throughout like this process where she meets the dude. She falls in love. She decides to have sex. And then before she has sex, she goes to like Planned Parenthood to get condoms. She like, like she basically learns anatomy and reproductive stuff, like all sorts of different things that are laid out. Like this is what's happening to Catherine. But reader, I'm really talking to you and I'm making it as plain as possible. If you're going to have sex, do this stuff because this is how you have safe sex.

29:43Chuck Bryant:and of course as we'll see like that just made it an absolute target for um book challenges where you formally request a book be banned or removed from a library yeah i mean we can go ahead and

29:57Josh Clark:talk about that if you want um i mean as much as people love judy bloom there was another set of people that hated uh an author a grown woman writing about the realistic challenges of like being a kid and being a tween or a teen and going through puberty and all that stuff. So, uh, she was a target right out of the gate for book banning, like you said, and is on a lot of lists as, you know, some of the most banned books of all time have been Judy Blume books, which is like a, to me, a feather in your cap as an author, because that means you're probably telling the truth about something.

30:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah. But as we'll see, that drove her crazy. Like she is not one for censorship, you know?

30:37Josh Clark:Oh yeah, for sure.

30:38Chuck Bryant:So, um, the, the, Key I saw to understanding why everybody wants to ban Judy Blume books is that Judy Blume was the epitome of second wave feminism. Like all the stuff that Betty Friedan talked about in The Feminine Mystique is embodied in the writing of Judy Blume. And Judy Blume is talking directly to the next generation of kids, essentially saying, this is the way to be. This is a good way to become a good person and love yourself and treat other people kindly. and the arch rival to second wave feminism in the 70s and 80s, and I think still today, is conservatism. They don't want kids shaped like that.

31:22Chuck Bryant:So when they see people, when they see books like that, Judy Blume books in their library, they don't want their kids anywhere near it. So they request the book be removed. That's why those books get challenged all the time is because they're a challenge themselves to conservative ideology, which largely revolves around the idea that if you don't teach kids stuff, they're not going to do it. They're not going to think of it themselves and they're not going to do it. And yeah, it seems preposterous to me too. And it gets proven wrong time and time and time again. But that's just how, that's just the conservative outlook.

31:58Chuck Bryant:That's just, they don't feel comfortable trying a different way in that respect. And, you know, I mean, that's a lot of people's viewpoint. It's not necessarily mine, but I think, you know, it doesn't mean it's inherently wrong. I just don't like the idea of banning books, even though I get to an extent where they're coming from. They're trying to protect their children, not take off Judy Blume or the liberals.

32:21Josh Clark:Yeah. And I think a lot of what that frame of mind comes from is I want to be the decider of my kid learning what they learn when they learn it as far as sexuality goes. Right. I want to be in charge of that. I don't want it to come from some book from some lady that they happen to check out at the library.

32:38Chuck Bryant:Because they had a good like cover illustration.

32:40Josh Clark:Yeah. And, you know, I get that to a certain degree, but like TS, you know, for Judy, as far as she goes, she didn't think she was being very controversial. She thought, I'm just writing in a very frank way about how kids really are. Like I was writing the truth. Right. Chuck Bryant will one day say. She didn't like the sterilized adolescence that she saw portrayed in like other kids' books and, you know, books that ignored the angst of what was going on in kids' lives. So she thought, and I think she was very much correct in my opinion and I'm sure yours, that she was doing a service by like kind of portraying the realism of childhood and teendom.

33:19Yeah.

33:20Chuck Bryant:Better to learn this stuff from an adult who knows what they're talking about, who's been through this and knows how to describe the process of having safe sex than from Tina, who has an older brother that mentioned to her like, you know, one time.

33:34Josh Clark:Yeah, exactly.

33:35Chuck Bryant:So, yes, she has been, I think she's not just been one of the most banned authors of the 80s and the 90s, but also the 21st century. I think even in 2025, 2024, 2025 school year, she was, her novel Forever was on the list of most banned books. The one that had, it was basically a safe sex self-help manual. manual. So yeah, you can kind of understand that. But it's not just that. There's been other ones too, like Tiger Eyes is about a girl whose father is killed during a robbery of the 7-Eleven that he works at. And her coming to terms with that and suffering from grief and depression. One of her friends is an underage binge drinker.

34:26Chuck Bryant:I mean, that book gets banned a lot too.

34:30Josh Clark:Yeah, man, I just think it's so cool that she was brave enough to, like, write these stories, you know?

34:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, she was very brave, especially after it became clear, and I think it did fairly early on, that there was a large segment of America that viewed her books as controversial. And so, yeah, every time she sat down and wrote one of these, it was a greater and greater act of bravery.

34:54Josh Clark:Yeah, and a bigger and bigger middle finger.

34:57Chuck Bryant:Pretty much.

34:59Josh Clark:Should we take our second break?

35:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

35:01Josh Clark:All right. We'll be right back, everybody, with more on Judy Blume.

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36:52Josh Clark:All right, so I did mention, and you know, this isn't the most revealing thing in the world. A lot of authors write about what they know, but Judy Blume definitely did that. When she was living in Maine, she wrote a story set in Maine. When she lived in New Mexico, she wrote, I think it said movie. She wrote a book. You know, I'm talking about books here. She wrote a book. Did I say movie? I don't think so. Okay. I thought it said movie.

37:16Chuck Bryant:If you did, I'm sorry I missed it.

37:17Josh Clark:Anyway, a lot of times she wrote books like set where she was living or about sort of veiled, thinly veiled sort of things that happened in her own childhood.

37:26Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

37:27Josh Clark:not super unusual, but she also did the same thing. You know, she wrote adult books, too. We're talking about her kids' books. She wrote four novels for adults. They were all bestsellers as well, and they were all sort of about her life experiences, starting with Wifey in 1978, about a woman who was in a sort of traditional marriage who wanted to break out of that.

37:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, pretty autobiographical. There's also Smart Women, which was about women navigating dating in relationships after post like post-divorce. Yeah, there you go. That was 83. There's also one that came out in 98 called Summer Sisters. It's about a female friendship. That sounds pretty sweet.

38:07Josh Clark:Yeah, summer's in the season.

38:09Chuck Bryant:And then in the unlikely event from 2015, that was the one you mentioned that she wrote about a family going through those actual plane crashes that she went through.

38:18Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I said that critics, they certainly didn't love everything. I know Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret, and a lot of her bestsellers got some good marks with critics. But a lot of critics kind of dunked on her for being a simplistic writer. There was one critic who compared her writing to a shopping list, and I always just thought her work was just very readable for her audience. If that's simplistic, then I guess it works, in my opinion, you know? Yeah.

38:48Chuck Bryant:I mean, we're talking about 11-year-old readers who may have only been reading for the last handful of years, you know? Yeah, totally. Yeah. But the difference is she didn't write down to them. Right. Good point. Yeah. I think there were just people who didn't like what she was writing and were taking pot shots wherever they felt they could.

39:09Josh Clark:This made me kind of want to reread one of her books and just see how it grabbed me as an adult, you know? Same.

39:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I ran across a couple of people who were talking about some of these books and they were like, yeah, I spent three hours reading this and it was well worth it.

39:21Josh Clark:You can just blaze through it. Yeah.

39:24Chuck Bryant:I feel the same way. That, I'd like to read some more, just at least one or two. And then the entire catalog of Sweet Valley High.

39:34Josh Clark:Emily read those too, man. She reads a lot and read a lot as a kid.

39:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Well, they were huge when we were younger.

39:41Josh Clark:Yeah. And the other one for Emily was the Nancy Drew books. She still has her collection from her mom from when she was a kid. And she read all of those.

39:49Chuck Bryant:That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, my sisters read those and the Hardy Boys a little bit. I was a fan of Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators.

39:59Josh Clark:Remember them? Why does that sound so familiar?

40:03Chuck Bryant:It was like Alfred Hitchcock's nephew, and every once in a while they could call on Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah, I think I might have read some of those. Investigate some. It was very Hardy Boys-esque.

40:13Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah.

40:14Chuck Bryant:I liked them for some reason.

40:16Josh Clark:What a time.

40:17Chuck Bryant:What a time to be alive. So because of all of the book banning and stuff that went on, it's probably no surprise that she became very much a kind of central person in the anti-book banning movement. Yeah.

40:34Josh Clark:She has worked a lot over the years with the National Coalition Against Censorship. She had a couple of projects in the 80s trying to get parents and kids talking more. And one was called the Kids Fund, capital K-I-D-S, in 1981. Yeah, very cool. And that's to develop programs that encourage communication between parents and teens to foster parent-child discussions through books. And then she had a book. I don't think we mentioned one of the things that she got a lot through her career was letters from kids who often told her things that they would never tell their parents and were just very open and expressive.

41:10So she hopefully had permission, but she eventually put those out in a book called Letters to Judy, colon, What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You.

41:19Josh Clark:And this was in 1986.

41:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I thought that was a pretty cool thing to do.

41:23Josh Clark:Yeah, same.

41:25Chuck Bryant:So, yeah, like she's the real deal. She's not just in it for the dough. Although I'm quite sure she's made quite a bit of dough because I think she's sold like 90 million copies of her books over the years. in 40 different languages.

41:42Josh Clark:That's amazing.

41:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so she has made quite a bit of money, but she's also legit in the fact that she really genuinely wants to figure out how to bridge the gap between parents and their kids to help both groups. She also, you said that she was, like, really against censorship. One of the things that she took a stand against was back in 2023 was a cancel culture. Basically any kind of intellectual censorship or anything that was against any intellectual freedom, she was against. And she was talking about this in an interview with the Times of London in April of that year. And apparently they asked her about J.K.

42:29Chuck Bryant:Rowling, who at the time, and I think still basically every day, was controversial because she made some repeated, double down comments about that were just transphobic, essentially. And out of that context, in a different context, they asked Judy Blume about that, about J.K. Rowling. And she said that, I love her. I am behind her 100 % as I watch from afar. And the way that it was printed in the Times of London article, it made it sound like she was like, yeah, I'm backing up this person's transphobic comments. I'm behind her 100%. So she had to take the social media to be like, that was out of context.

43:16Josh Clark:Yeah. In fact, I think we should read her quote even. She said, I wholly support the trans community. My point, which was taken out of context, is that I can empathize with a writer or any person who has been harassed online. I stand with the trans community and vehemently disagree with anyone who does not fully support equality and acceptance of LGTBQ plus people, anything to the contrary is total BS. Yeah. And I love that she took such a hard stance of like, hey, hey, hey, don't misunderstand my words. Like, I'm Judy effing Bloom.

43:51Chuck Bryant:Exactly. That was pretty much what's between the lines there for sure.

43:54Josh Clark:Yeah.

43:57Chuck Bryant:So, let's see. You said that she lives in Key West now. Yeah. You can go to Books and Books at the studios of Key West and say hi, maybe buy something. And then she's, I mean, she's just basically been really back in the spotlight in the last few years, even though she's, from what I understand, still on hiatus since 2015 from writing or at least publishing. But starting in 2023, there were not just that movie for Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret, which, like you said, people have been waiting decades for. There's a documentary that came out that year, Judy Blume Forever. It's great. And then in 2024, there was a biography, The Genius of Judy, by Rochelle Bergstein.

44:37Chuck Bryant:That was kind of like a scholarly exploration of how Bloom's work impacted kids. And then there was another one. It was an authorized and then unauthorized autobiography called Judy Blume colon A Life that her friend Mark Oppenheimer published in March 2026 and that she publicly removed her support from, cut off contact with Oppenheimer and then didn't explain to the public or Oppenheimer why. Yeah, I don't know why. No, no one knows why. She didn't tell me. poured over those books and have been like, or that book, and have been like, maybe this is it? Is this it? I don't know. Mark Oppenheimer's like, I have no idea.

45:21Chuck Bryant:She didn't explain it to me. There wasn't anything controversial. But she read the first draft and that was it. Yeah.

45:27Josh Clark:Yeah. Who knows? I know what you mentioned. She had those two divorces, but you'll be glad to know that she found long lasting true love. Sometimes it takes a couple of times to get it right, but she met a guy named George Cooper in 1979, and they moved in together after their very first date and got married eight years later in 1987, and that is who helps her run that bookstore down in Key West. So they're still together after all these years.

45:53Chuck Bryant:That is super cute. Yeah, he's like a civil rights law professor, I think. Yeah, that sounds about right. What else you got? I got nothing else. I don't either. Hats off to Judy Blume. Even if you don't agree with her writing and what she writes about to kids, you still got to admire her bravery and courage.

46:15Josh Clark:Agreed.

46:17Chuck Bryant:And if you want to know more about Judy Blume, it doesn't really matter what age you are. Go read some of her books. Yeah. And while you're doing that, you know what? You could do a lot worse than checking it out at your local library to support its existence there. And or could do both. buy one from your local independent bookseller.

46:36Josh Clark:Yeah, maybe from Judy Blume herself. Sure, yeah. If you're in Key West.

46:41Chuck Bryant:Or if you find a dude selling books out of the trunk of his car, that is as independent a bookseller as you can find.

46:48Josh Clark:I wonder if you bought one from Judy Blume herself in her own bookstore and you're like, oh my God, will you please sign this? She's like, I don't sign books on Judy Blume. Please leave, here's your receipt. Middle finger.

47:00Chuck Bryant:uh let's see chuck just made himself laugh which is wonderful that means it's time for listener

47:05Josh Clark:mail that means he's awake uh bonjour josh and chuck my husband and i finally had a chance to see you live for the first time at massey hall in uh toronto this june yeah which in real time was just a couple of nights ago for us and it was the greatest show on earth yeah we got a standing ovation. Yeah, it was really something. We are from a small community about two hours and a half north of Toronto, and we're definitely not city people, but we figured it's worth it for Josh and Chuck. My husband's been a huge fan and loyal listener for many years. I'll admit that I had personally listened because it gave me something to talk about with a guy who would eventually become my husband, but it didn't take long before I genuinely fell in love with the show myself, and because of that, I've always associated both of you with the very beginning of our relationship.

47:50Chuck Bryant:Nice.

47:51Josh Clark:your show at Massey Hall far exceeded our expectations. I just wanted to thank you for giving us such a wonderful evening. Atmosphere was warm, relaxed, genuinely fun. My husband was smiling from ear to ear the entire time. And despite the anxiety that events like this can sometimes bring, he was comfortable and able to simply enjoy himself. And that alone meant more to me than I can express. So thank you both for doing what you do. Despite all the craziness in the world right now, it brought me so much joy to see a room full of people come together simply to laugh and learn and enjoy a couple of hours together.

48:21Josh Clark:I think your Canadian listeners know just how kind and genuine you both are, and we truly appreciate that you made the trip to spend some time with us here in Canada. We'd be lucky to have you back anytime because you're always welcome here. Thanks for such a memorable experience. Warmly, Kelsey and Andrew Sweet.

48:36Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that is a world-class email, huh?

48:40Josh Clark:Maybe best ever.

48:41Chuck Bryant:That's the kind of email that removes borders and just turns us into one great big North American continent. You know? Agreed. Well, thanks a lot, Kelsey and Andrew. Thanks for coming to see us. And thank you, Kelsey, for such a great email. And if you want to try to top that, let's see what you got. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

49:08Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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