More progress...Book #2

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

by Judy Blume


If I'd read this book as a pre-teen, I might have loved it.  Or not.  I can't really guess...it doesn't resonate with me; doesn't keep calling me back like other books have.  All kind of books have that power whether they be adult, kids', pre-teen, teen or even young adult.   (Not sure what the difference is between teen and young adult--you tell me.)

When all this is over, I need to check out Shelf Discovery again and see what Lizzie Skurnick thought of it--and why she included it in her book.  Because to me, this is less of  a "teen classics we never stopped reading" but rather a, "pre-teen classics that we read to death and moved on from."

I may have to make up my own list.  There were several books on hers that I would not have called teen books.  They were great kids' books--but not teen books.  Farmer Boy, for example--why that and not Little Town on the Prairie?  I read Little Town to pieces when I was a teenager.  It didn't have hog-slaughtering, but it did have hay-stacking and rebellious feelings and finding out your parents were people, too.

All that said, I loved Sally J. Freedman.  She was me, in so many ways.  And I loved all of the deliciously round characters that Judy Blume populated Sally's world with.   Sally's brother, the smothered, desperately trying to emerge, adolescent.  Sally's mom, the quintessential Jewish mom.  Even her dad--I didn't like him at first, but he grew on me.  He was a really good Dad but not just a really good Dad--he was a man who wanted to have sex with his wife.  (Although not in so many words.)

And what I liked the most was the frustrating way that adults never wanted to answer Sally's troubling questions.  I've been there!