—Judy Blume

This last week I've been knocked out with a cold - the kind a lot of people would call the 'flu, but is just really a bad, bad cold.  The type where you either sleep or just lie there staring listlessly into space because watching tv or listening to audio hurts your ears, and your eyes don't want to focus on anything, and never mind your brain; your brain is too focused on trying to figure out why it feels like you've just swallowed razor blades, and trying not think about anything else at all.

So when I finally started feeling vaguely human yesterday I needed comfort and ease, and a reason to laugh.  I needed Judy Blume and Berkeley Breathed.  All of these I've read before, but all of them survived the reunion.

Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great - Judy Blume:  Well, ok, I hadn't read this one since I was a kid and remembered it as less than a favorite.  I remembered correctly as it's the Blume book I like the least (relatively speaking, b/c everything she wrote for kids is brilliant).  Sheila had a problem with honesty and even as a kid I did not care for the way she fabricated lies to prop up her ego.  Blume tries to show the reader Sheila does this out of fear, but it never really engaged my sympathy, although Blume might have been writing about me in the scene involving the swimming test.  Still, 3 stars.

Freckle Juice - Judy Blume:  I've always thought this book was great.  Definitely written for the younger kids; the gross factor is high and the storyline simple and straight forward, though I particularly enjoy the tiny twist at the end more so as an adult.

Deenie - Judy Blume The Blume book I found Most Confronting as a teen, and still found painful to read.  Scoliosis terrified me growing up and this book did not help matters.  My later diagnosis sent me into paroxysms of hysteria, even though mine is so mild it wasn't worth treating.  Decades later, this book is still hard to read, but what stands out the most is this is one of the rare Judy Blume books that feature active parental interference.  In a note at the end of this edition, Blume acknowledges this, saying she wrote Deenie as a way to explore how parental expectations can shape and pigeonhole children.

Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope - Berkeley Breathed and Bloom County: Best Read On The Throne - Berkeley Breathed:  Bloom County is one of those things that you either get or you don't.  It shaped my teen aged years in ways I cannot adequately explain and Breathed's comeback in 2015 felt like a cherished part of my life had been returned to me; to stick with comic strip metaphors, it's like Linus getting his blanket back.  And the blanket has a hilarious sense of humor.

Hemingway House and the Hemingway cats were just one of the book highlights of my 2.5 day trip Key West.  The other was a trip to Books & Books, a non-profit bookshop run by the only living author I turn fan-girl over.  Judy Blume.  It is not hyperbole or exaggeration of any kind to say this woman was the single biggest influence in my childhood and pre-teen years.  So, no WAY was I going to miss visiting her bookstore, even if odds of her being there were slim.

She was there.

She was lovely.  I was a blithering idiot, of course.  What I could manage to say was nothing, I"m sure, that she hasn't heard a million times over the years, and I'm kicking myself for not having enough wits about me to tell her what I really appreciated about her books (that all her characters had agency and didn't need adults or friends to tell them what was right or wrong), but she was wonderful, kind and patient nevertheless.  She was preparing for an extended trip and was in a meeting when I arrived, but she paused the meeting to come out and sign my books (because of COURSE I bought some of her books), and chat with me for a few minutes.

Aside from her books, and her very presence, Books & Books is a fabulous bookshop.  I went in with ZERO intention of looking at books beyond Judy Blume's because, as I think you all know, I had already managed to accumulate a fair number of books by this time.  (*cough*four boxes*cough*)  But as I was making my way to the counter, I found the newest of the Prehistorica pop-up books, Sharks And Other Sea Monsters, and when the woman behind the counter saw me squee'ing over that one, she showed me the wonder of Ocean: A Photicular Book, which has the best holographic images I've ever seen - they honestly look like little movies on the page.  I was entranced.  It was one of a series and it was killing me to just choose one. 

MT had stopped at a cigar shop before meeting me at the bookstore, arriving as I was just starting to chat with JB, and in those few minutes he managed to find 3 more books to add to the pile (two are future xmas gifts) and would have added 2 others had I not already started checking out.  If this had been the first stop on our holiday instead of the last, the damage we'd have done to their inventory and our finances would have been impressive.  There were just too many interesting books screaming for attention.

So here's my plug: if you ever find yourself in Key West, absolutely go to Books and Books - whether you go to fan girl(boy) over Judy Blume or not, the inventory is sure to appeal to any and all book lovers.  Bring a big bag.

This book is HILARIOUS! This will be fun and hysterical for any grade level, IF the teacher is reading it aloud. Otherwise, Fountas & Pinnell would probably give this book the label S. That would make it appropriate for independent reading for a 4th or 5th grader. I actually used this book over the summer for a child leaving 5th grade, but she is a struggling reader and also has dyslexia. It had GREAT vocabulary for her. She wrote down all of the vocabulary words for each chapter, defined them, used them in sentences, and was able to spell the, We also had comprehension questions at the end of every chapter. I might use the same worksheets I used for her in a small reading group.

I wish I knew what magic makes a book so compelling that you just get sucked right into it and look up hours later, thinking, “I should go to bed, but just a few more pages, but ohhh I’m really going to be sorry when my alarm goes off at 5:30, but just a few more pages, ohhh what the heck okay another chapter.”

In another author’s hands, maybe, this would not have been that kind of book. There were a couple of twists but it was otherwise fairly predictable. The characters were not especially complex and yet I just wanted to know what happened, what they did, why did they do it, and yes I even needed a few Kleenex at the end. The brief little peeks into every (with one key exception) character’s innermost thoughts following key events should have been annoying, but I was instead delighted with them.

I can’t explain it, but this was one of those books. More than 400 pages and I am a slow, stodgy reader, but I gobbled this one up in 2 days. Go figure.

Paperback version, picked up secondhand on a whim 3 years ago.

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