How Judy Bloom Broke the Rules, Upset Parents, Took on Pat Buchanan and Stopped a Twitter Mob
Judy Bloom was in the hot seat.
It was 1984 and “Is God There? It’s Me, Margaret.” “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” and “Blubber” were invited to appear on CNN’s “Crossfire,” by liberal journalist Tom Braden. and a news entertainment show co-hosted by conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan.
As a guest, Bloom sat between them, smiling anxiously at the camera.
Buchanan started the conversation. “Microsoft. Bloom looks like a very nice woman,” he began steadily before delivering his first verbal punch. “What I wanted to ask you was . . . what is this preoccupation with sex in books for 10-year-olds?”
Bloom’s eyes widened as she recounted the references in her books to menstruation, masturbation, and voyeurism. “Why can’t I? . . How do you write an interesting, exciting book for 10-year-olds without discussing masturbation?” Buchanan asked him, evoking his 1973 novel “Dinny.”
Buchanan was agile throughout the segment to avoid most of the hits. “Did you stop masturbating?” She asked him not to back down when he described what he described as “a scene from a book.”
But her point was made for the “Crossfire” audience — Judy Bloom’s book was bad for children.
That episode aired at the height of the culture wars of the mid-’80s, when the right-wing movement that elected Ronald Reagan aimed to roll back the changes unleashed by the Sexual Revolution. Bloom was a frequent target – he was for a time the country’s most banned author – but despite public pressure, he and his writing survived.
Today, at age 86, Bloom, who is now based in Key West, Fla., is almost universally beloved, with more than 90 million copies of his books sold and multiple film and television projects in the works. A Netflix adaptation of her book “Forever” is forthcoming, while Peacock is planning a screen version of “Summer Sisters,” created by Jenna Bush Hager.
Ironically, the choices that got him into trouble in the 1980s – his willingness to tackle controversial topics including puberty and sexuality in children’s books – are precisely why he is celebrated now.
“He talked about things that were never talked about,” said Arlene LaVerde, who will serve as president of the New York Librarians Association from 2023 to 2024. . . He talked about things [in her writing] What we wanted to know but no one was willing to tell us.
Born in Elizabeth, NJ, Bloom has been bold since her first book, which she wrote in her early thirties with two young children at home. “Iggie’s House,” released in 1970, confronted the issue of small-town racism. Eleven-year-old Winnie Barringer is terrified when her neighbors try to stop a black family from buying a house on her block. After the family of five leaves, Winnie goes out of her way to make amends and make them feel welcome, leading to some cringe-worthy moments.
“Say, are you from Africa?” Winnie asks the new kids cluelessly.
“Detroit,” one of them corrected him, through gritted teeth. “Have you ever heard of Detroit?”
The manuscript for “Iggy’s House” got the then-novelist Bloom’s foot in her publisher’s door, but it was her next book, 1970’s “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.” Which established her as a mentor to young girls.
At the beginning of the book, 11-year-old Margaret has just moved from Manhattan to New Jersey where she has to make sense of unfamiliar social dynamics — like the fact that all the Christian kids belong at the Y while the Jews go there. JCC — and her soon-to-be adolescent body. She stuffs her bra, peeks through her father’s copies of “Playboy” and prays to God that she won’t be her last period among her new friends. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I’m done,” she muses, after her mother tells her some girls have to wait until they’re 14. “Oh God, I just want to be normal.”
This was new territory for children’s literature at the time, which tended to stick to safe topics — hometown hijinks, a la Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books, and time travel, such as 1962’s “A.” Tell me in time. But that hasn’t stopped Bloom from pushing the envelope. In 1973 he published “Dinny”, a 13-year-old aspiring model who was diagnosed with scoliosis. Deenie had to wear an embarrassingly clunky back brace, which annoyed her. Lying in bed at night to soothe herself, she touches her “special spot”.
If that wasn’t clear enough to the readers, Dini attends a family life class where a teacher named Mrs. Rapoport talks openly with her teenage girls about sex.
“Does anyone know the word for stimulating our genitalia?” Mrs. Rapoport asks her class to answer an anonymous question. When a kid answers shyly, he confirms that yes, it’s called masturbation and that “it’s normal and harmless to masturbate.”
“Dinny” flew under the radar at first but as time went on and Bloom became more popular, scenes like this came back to bite him. By 1984, Buchanan was far from the only conservative critic of Bloom. Jerry Falwell’s moral majority has made it clear they can’t stand him. Anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly circulated a pamphlet entitled “How to Read Your Schools and Libraries of Judy Bloom Books”.
Back then — much like today — there was intense debate about what material contained children’s stories.
But now, Bloom’s most die-hard fans are all grown up.
Adults who loved Bloom’s books in the 70s, 80s and 90s all say the same thing — that he taught them things they couldn’t have learned anywhere else. Even when sex education in public schools was enough to make parents and educators red-faced and upset, Bloom was writing novels like 1975’s “Forever,” about a high school senior named Catherine who falls in love for the first time. time, and loses her virginity to her boyfriend (after a trip to Planned Parenthood to get a prescription for birth control pills).
Through her writings, Bloom “became a prominent advocate for a more explicit type of sex education that acknowledges the sexual autonomy of adolescents, sex life,” says Jonathan Zimmerman, author of “Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education.” ” This stance made him some notable enemies in the ’80s, but it’s also earned him hero status in 2024.
Indeed, nostalgic readers—many of whom still think of Bloom as something of a surrogate mother—think so much of her that even now that she is in her mid-80s, she is still expected to embody progressive ideals.
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In April 2023, Bloom expressed her support in an interview for fellow blockbuster author JK Rowling, who has faced repeated backlash for her views against transgender rights.
Immediately, social media erupted with lamentations that left-wing icon Bloom might share his views. It wasn’t long before Bloom himself took to X (then on Twitter) to clarify his position. “I fully support the trans community. My point, taken out of context, is that I can empathize with a writer — or person — who has been harassed online,” Bloom wrote. “Anything to the contrary is total bulls-t.”
It immediately shut down its critics. By now Bloom, who has spent fifty years in the public eye and who recently won a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, understands the enduring power of his platform.
“How I wish reading could be celebrated in every home, in every school, at every age,” she said in her bubbly acceptance speech, which she filmed at her home in Key West, Fla. “Because reading and thinking and ideas are always a good thing.”
Rachelle Bergstein is a lifestyle writer and author of three books, including “The Genius of Judy: How Judy Bloom Rewrote Childhood for Us All” Out July 16..