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Judy Blume was born February 12, 1938 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She attended Boston University after high school but had to take a break after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. She later received a bachelor's degree at New York University in education in 1960. She began her writing careers in the 1960's. Judy Blume says she didn't wish to be a writer until she was stay home mom at the age of 25, she felt something was missing until she had started rhyming picture books while she was washing dishes one evening. She is known for writing children's and young adult books. She typically writes fiction books.

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Grades: 3-5

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1969- The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo
1970- Are you there God? It's Me, Margaret.
1970- Iggie's House
1971- Then Again, Maybe I Won't
1972- It's Not the End of the World
1972- Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
1972- Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great
1973- Deenie
1974- Blubber
1974- The Pain and the Great One
1975- Forever...
1977- Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself
1978- Freckle Juice
1978- Wifey
1980- Superfudge
1981- The Judy Blume Diary
1981- Tiger Eyes
1983- Smart Women
1986- Just as Long as We're Together
1986- Letters to Judy
1988- The Judy Blume Memory Book
1990- Fudge-a-Mania
1993- Here's to You, Rachel Robinson
1998- Summer Sisters
1999- Places I Never Meant To Be
2000- It's Fine To Be Nine
2000- It's Heaven To Be Seven
2002- Double Fudge
2007- Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One
2008- Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One
2008- Going, Going, Gone! with the Pain and the Great One
2008- Friend or Fiend? with the Pain and the Great One
2015- In the Unlikely Event

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Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is the first of a series of four books. Peter Hatcher is fourth grade boy who lives in New York City with his family. The book focuses on the relationship between Peter and his little brother Farley Draxel also known as "Fudge". Peter feels like Fudge is always in the way of things and causes catastrophes. Peter brings home his new turtle Dribbles and tells Fudge many times not to touch his pet turtle without his permission. Throughout the book Peter is put through many situations with his brother Fudge who always seem to cause trouble for the family. Peter is always helping his parents with Fudge. Towards the end of the book Peter's turtle goes missing which his brother admits to swallowing Dribble. Fudge is upset about the turtle and tells his mom which she is more worried for Fudge. Peter is mad because his parents are very attentive to Fudge in the hospital even though Peter lost his pet turtle. Peter's parents in the end tell him how proud they are about Peter understanding the whole situation and gift him with a pet puppy.

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The story begins with Peter getting news that his mother will be having another baby. Peter feels that this is not good news. He reacts angrily that his parents did not check in with him on his parents having another baby. He already thinks that Fudge takes up too much of his parent's time he feels that this new baby will be a pain just like Fudge. Peter thinks that the best idea is for him to run away but when he smells his mom's food he decides to stay. When the baby arrives, Peter learns that he has a sister named Tootsie. As Peter is adjusting to this new life change his parents give him unexpected news which is they are moving to Princeton, New Jersey. One again Peter feels let down because he feels his parents did not consult him first about this move. He again plans to run away. Peter meets a new friend Alex once they move and is adjusting to his new life. Peter's dad struggles to write a book which is why they moved to New Jersey in the first place. Peter is still angry with the way Fudge behaves. At the end of the school year, Peter's parents asks if the children want to stay in New Jersey or whether they want to move back to New York but they are undecided until Tootsie says something that sounds like New York. Peter is excited that he will be moving back to New York.

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In Double Fudge, Fudge becomes obsessed with money. Since Fudge found about money he thinks he can buy anything including New York. Peter is never interested in Fudge's ideas and normally his parents are patient with Fudge but become concerned with Fudge's obsession with money. Peter learns his best friend Jimmy is moving. They decide to take a trip to Washington D.C. to show Fudge how money is made and run into Mr. Hatcher's family from Hawaii. His family decides to invite themselves into Peter's home in New York which Peter isn't excited about. One of the cousins is name after fudge and behave the same way.

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Peter isn't too thrilled when he learns his family is vacationing in a vacation home in Southwest Harbor, Maine with the Tubmans, the family of his sworn enemy Sheila Tubman. Fudge tells Peter he plans on marrying Sheila.

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The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo

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The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo

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Freddy Dissel feels lonely because he is the middle child of his family. He eventually gets noticed when he is given a role as a green kangaroo in a school play.

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1989-1991: Favorite Author, Children's Choice Award, Harris County, Texas
2000: Library of Congress Living Legends Award
2009: National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) honored and paid tribute to Blume's longstanding defense of free speech and her courageous battles against all kinds of censorship

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Video of Blume talking about book bans and censorship 

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Video of Blume talking about book bans and censorship 

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Judy Blume describes latest wave of book bans and censorship as 'disgusting' and 'fascist'

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Early Years

Judy Blume was born Judith Sussman on February 12, 1938, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The second child of Esther, a homemaker, and Rudolph, a dentist, Blume was given the chance to expend her creative energies through an array of activities that included piano and dance lessons. She especially enjoyed reading and constantly made up stories in her head.

After attending the all-girls' Battin High School, Blume was forced to leave Boston University after just two weeks upon contracting mononucleosis. She resumed her education at New York University, during which time she met lawyer John Blume. They were married shortly after the death of her father in 1959, and she graduated with a B.S. in education in 1961.

Famous Books

Having given birth to two children, daughter Randy and son Lawrence, by age 25, Blume sought to satisfy her creative urges by taking a writing course at NYU. Following years of rejections, she became a first-time author when her illustrated children's book The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo was published in 1969. Blume followed with her first novel, Iggie's House (1970), about an African American family that moves into a white neighborhood.

It was Blume's following book, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), that firmly established her as a leading voice for younger readers. Focusing on a girl who wonders about the pending arrival of her period and her parents' competing faiths, Blume deftly tapped into her experiences from pre-adolescence to deliver an endearing, honest coming-of-age story.

Her subsequent books Deenie (1973) and Forever... (1975) touched on the similarly sensitive but universal issues of body image and teenage sexuality. Other works, such as Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Blubber (1974) and Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1977), while geared toward younger readers, nonetheless stood out for stark portrayals of family strife and childhood angst.

Photo: Lawrence Lucier/FilmMagic

By 1975, Blume had grown bored with her suburban life and divorced her husband. She met physicist Thomas Kitchens and quickly remarried, but by the end of the decade, she was divorced again. Such experiences fueled the creation of more mature material, and in 1978 she published Wifey, about a repressed housewife.

Blume added another adult novel with Smart Women in 1983, but she mainly continued writing for younger audiences. She revisited her Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing characters with the 1980 sequel Superfudge, and mined the painful memory of losing her father for Tiger Eyes (1981). Later young adult fare included Just as Long as We're Together (1987) and its 1993 follow-up, Here's to You, Rachel Robinson.

Censorship

Despite the overwhelming popularity of her stories, Blume found herself a target for censors who sought to have her sensitive material removed from bookshelves. Five of her works - Forever..., Blubber, Are You There, God?, Deenie and Tiger Eyes - made the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently challenged books from the decade of 1990-99.

As a result, Blume joined the National Coalition Against Censorship to speak out in favor of intellectual freedom. She also edited the 1999 book Places I Never Meant to Be, a collection of short stories by authors who had also felt pressure from censors.

Recent Works and Accolades

Blume teamed up with her son Lawrence, a filmmaker, to write and produce the screen version of Tiger Eyes. Released in 2012, it was the first major adaptation of one of her books.

In the spring of 2015, Blume published her first novel in 17 years, In the Unlikely Event. Based on an unusual period from her childhood, when three planes crashed in her hometown over the span of two months, the book explores how such tragic events can affect families for generations.

The famed author has sold more than 85 million books, her words translated into nearly three dozen languages. Among her lengthy list of accolades, she was honored by American Library Association with the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1996, and the Library of Congress with its Living Legends Award in 2000.

Having found stability and happiness in her third marriage, to former law professor George Cooper, Blume splits her time between Key West, New York City and Martha's Vineyard. The couple has been married since 1987. She is also stepmother to Amanda Cooper, a political consultant. Along with her writing, she has developed a reputation for engaging with fans over Twitter.

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Judy Blume was born Judith Sussman on February 12, 1938, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The second child of Esther, a homemaker, and Rudolph, a dentist, Blume was given the chance to expend her creative energies through an array of activities that included piano and dance lessons.

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Judy Blume, originally named Judith Sussman, is an award-winning, bestselling author for children, teens, and adults. Born in 1938 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she graduated from New York University with a bachelor's degree in education. Blume published her first book, The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo, in 1969. During the next ten years, she published thirteen additional books including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Blume's first adult novel, Wifey, was published in 1983, and she has followed with other bestselling fiction for adults. Several of Blume's books appear on the list of top all-time bestselling children's books. Blume has won nearly 100 literary awards, including the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award and Distinguished Contribution to American Letters of the National Book Foundation.

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Judy Blume Books | List of books by author Judy Blume

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Judy Blume, originally named Judith Sussman, is an award-winning, bestselling author for children, teens, and adults. Born in 1938 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she graduated from New York University with a bachelor's degree in education. Blume published her first book, The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo, in 1969.

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The writer Judy Blume lives in Key West-"an exciting place to live," Blume told me, in March, when I visited. Chickens roam free, orchids "grow like weeds," cats wander in Hemingway's house, and disco plays out drag-bar windows, all in DeSantis-era Florida. Blume and her husband, George Cooper, moved to Key West thirty years ago, and have been doing their best to foster a kind of quotidian paradise, for themselves and the community. They live on the water and walk two miles every morning, with walking sticks, choosing their "A route" or "B route." They have a favorite source of Key-lime pie and a coterie of friends. Blume co-founded and works at an independent bookstore, Books & Books Key West; Cooper founded an independent movie theatre, the Tropic Cinema. Books & Books has a robust children's section, with a shelf and a half of Blume's novels-brisk sellers, which she often signs. That week, her 1970 coming-of-age classic, " Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," appeared in a small display, in pink paperback, and at the Tropic a poster for its new screen adaptation, with a tastefully nostalgic seventies font, was in a coming-soon display in the lobby. It opens this week.

My day with Blume began at 8:45 a.m., when she picked me up in a two-door convertible outside my hotel. Cooper, eighty-five, was behind the wheel; Blume, also eighty-five, was cheerfully wedged into the back seat. "Hello!" she said. They pointed out landmarks as we drove to breakfast. "Here's the cemetery with the famous tombstone that says ' I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK,' " George said, looking pleased. I told them about an idea I'd had for an epitaph-" BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME "-and we talked about their spring plans: premières of "Margaret" and a documentary, "Judy Blume Forever"; a visit from Blume's biographer; Blume being fêted at an awards luncheon in New York. As Cooper dropped us off at a Mediterranean restaurant, he smirked a little. "You know the thing you just said about the tombstone?" he asked. "That's how I feel about all this." We laughed, and then he drove off.

On the restaurant's patio, Blume poured apple juice into her water. "My morning cocktail," she said. Both she and Cooper have survived cancer in recent years, and though they're careful-"George and I are COVID virgins!"-they've come to seize life's pleasures. They traded their house for a sunny apartment on the beach, and Blume, whose books have sold more than ninety million copies, finally started considering some projects that she'd resisted for decades. "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," about a girl navigating puberty, friendship, religion, and a new town in suburban New Jersey ("Don't let New Jersey be too horrible," she prays), is perhaps the book that's closest to Blume's heart, and she'd long told agents that film rights were off the table. Over the years, she'd had some meetings-what she calls "Judy, sweetheart" lunches-that didn't inspire confidence. Then she got a "wonderful" letter from Kelly Fremon Craig, the director of "The Edge of Seventeen," whose producer and mentor was James L. Brooks. The team clicked, and the result is a sensitive, faithful, funny adaptation, starring the wondrous young actor Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret, Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie as her parents, and Kathy Bates as her irrepressible grandmother. It's paced and styled for children of the seventies and eighties, who are welcome to bring any young people who might dig it. The time seems right: generations that grew up with Margaret, having been given the pandemic years to reflect on what aging and childhood are all about, can now safely reunite with an old friend.

That old friend is Margaret, yes-but also Blume. One of the great truisms and paradoxes of the Judy Blume phenomenon is that, for millions of fans, her books performed the role of parents-helping guide kids through coming-of-age milestones like periods, erections, and masturbation-while giving parents and kids the freedom to avoid discussing those things. Her books are wise but not preachy, light on their feet, easy to digest. Reading one a little too early isn't going to mess anyone up. It's more likely to give you clues to the human mystery-which will, in turn, help you decode your future.

Blume, born Judith Sussman in 1938, sometimes avoided Blumian topics with her parents, too. She grew up in a Jewish family in Elizabeth, New Jersey, with a dentist father, a homemaker mother, and an older brother. Her mother didn't talk about feelings, but she was a reader, and "she let me read whatever I wanted," Blume said. Blume's first husband, John Blume, was a lawyer she met as an undergraduate at N.Y.U.; they raised a son and a daughter in a New Jersey cul-de-sac, where Blume tried her hand at picture books ("terrible imitation Dr. Seuss"), which were rejected by publishers. Then she found an ad from a press looking for realist fiction for middle-grade kids. She submitted " Iggie's House," a novel about a Black family moving to a white suburban neighborhood, and the editor Dick Jackson plucked it out of the slush pile. Jackson was "a stunningly beautiful man," Blume told me: creative, idealistic, nurturing. Publishing "Iggie's House" gave her the confidence to "let go" and write a freer, more personal book. The result was "Margaret," about a sixth-grade girl with a secular Jewish father and secular Christian mother, who experiments with religion by having heartfelt chats with God. ("Please help me grow God. You know where.")

Many Blume enthusiasts associate her with places where she has lived and set books: New Mexico (" Tiger Eyes"); Manhattan (" Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing"); Martha's Vineyard (" Summer Sisters"); and southern Florida, where she spent time as a child and set one of her best novels-" Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself," about a Jewish girl in postwar Miami Beach with a fervid imagination. "I think that the reason I like Key West so much is that I'm back in Miami Beach," Blume told me. "I'm ten years old. Same bicycle: a Schwinn, with foot brakes. And it's the same night sky, you know?" Like Sally, Blume had a brother whose poor health was thought to be helped by a warm climate. After the Second World War, her family moved to Miami, and her father, who kept his practice in New Jersey, flew down as often as possible. Blume began talking to God, making deals. "This was all about being away from my father," she said. "My job was to keep him safe and protect him. I made bargains, like 'I'll get a hundred on my spelling test if you keep Daddy safe.' " Blume's father was the more nurturing parent; his family had a history of heart trouble ("the Sussman curse"), and Blume worried about him dying young.

Both "Sally" and "Margaret" drew on these memories, but "Sally" was set in an era when a ten-year-old might worry that Hitler is secretly alive and lurking in Florida. "Margaret" was set in the comfortable present, amid suburban prosperity. Most people think of it not as a book about God but about an equally great mystery: puberty. "I wrote a first draft in six weeks," Blume said. As a girl, she'd been excited to get breasts, get her period, and grow up, and her characters reflect this, tenderly and hilariously. At a Manhattan screening of the "Margaret" movie in January, featuring a conversation between Blume and Jenna Bush Hager, who's developing a "Summer Sisters" series, the room erupted at the mention of a memorable detail: Margaret's secret club, at school, and its boobs-enhancing arm-thrust-and-chant ritual. ("We must! We must! We must increase our bust!") Blume said that she'd had to intervene on set when she saw the girls thrusting wrong, and Bush Hager asked Blume's childhood friend, in the audience, whether they'd actually done the ritual as girls. "I didn't have to!" the friend said, to mass delight.

After Blume and I finished our eggs, we walked down a palm-tree-lined street toward her bookstore. Chickens clucked around; workmen painted the porches of Victorian houses. "A lot of little alleyways, wonderful lanes," Blume said, pointing out landmarks: the novelist Ann Beattie's place, an inn where Charlamagne tha God, a Blume fan, had recently stayed with his wife.

Blume opened Books & Books in 2016, as part of the Studios of Key West, an arts center on the west side of town. "We thought it would be seventy-five-to-eighty-five-per-cent locals and a smattering of tourists," she told me. "In fact, it's just the opposite." The store is in the Studios' three-story Art Deco building, a former Masonic center. As we approached the big front windows, Blume said, "I have to show you Cardboard Judy," gesturing toward a life-size cutout of herself shelving a book. Her daughter and stepdaughter had it made for her eighty-fifth birthday party. Non-cardboard Judy is a popular staff member; Cardboard Judy, one imagines, helps reduce selfie requests. "The new rule is I can no longer stop moving," Blume said.

Inside, it was bustling, and everyone wore a mask. Blume showed me the Key West Literary Pantheon, a ring of about fifty names, painted below the ceiling, that honored writers with a local connection: Hemingway, Truman Capote, Richard Wilbur, Robert Stone, Shel Silverstein, Alison Lurie. Blume isn't up there: the writers in the Pantheon-about whom Cooper has published a guidebook, available for purchase-are all dead. Blume knew many of them; she told me that her dream literary dinner party would be "all my Key West friends who've died, plus all the ones who are still here." Around 1997, a publisher rejected "Summer Sisters," and Blume treated her misery with a bike ride. "I ran into Bob Stone," she said. "He asked me how I was, and I burst into tears. He patted me and put his arms around me." Stone was writing " Damascus Gate "; both books became best-sellers.

Blume zipped around the store, tidying shelves and table displays. "This is the most banned book in America right now," she told me, picking up Maia Kobabe's graphic-novel memoir " Gender Queer." "It's lovely-a very sweet story about someone who finds themselves." (Several of Blume's books have been banned, too.) Other favorites: " Fun Home" ("this I adore"), Colm Tóibín's " The Magician" ("it's about Thomas Mann"), " Trust the Plan," about QAnon ("George and I listened to this-very good"), and " Mother Bruce," a picture book about a male bear who raises orphaned birds. She picked up Philip Roth's " The Plot Against America." "I hand-sell this a lot," she said. "I have a thing about Roth." Roth grew up near Blume, and their mothers went to high school together. "I always say that I'm thankful that Philip Roth wasn't in Elizabeth when those plane crashes happened," Blume said. Her most recent novel, " In the Unlikely Event " (2015), was inspired by the story of three crashes that occurred in Elizabeth in a span of three months, in 1951 and 1952, when Blume was a teen-ager. Roth "must have been in college," she told me.

A woman waiting by the cash register held a copy of "Margaret," staring at Blume from behind her mask. Blume doesn't sign books at the store anymore; people fill out a form and she takes them home. "But even that takes me an hour a day," Blume said. "It's gotten way out of hand." After the woman paid, Blume went to the children's section and moved a "Margaret" paperback into an empty display stand. "I fought against a fiftieth-anniversary edition," Blume said-emphasizing that a tweens' book was fifty might not enhance its appeal. But she loved the new cover, which features a text-message conversation: on the right, the book's title, and, on the left, the ellipses of a coming response. Every generation has had its own "Margaret"; this one, speaking the language of smartphones, draws kids into a rotary-phone world.

That world is a straightforward one-matter-of-fact, funny, conversational. "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret. We're moving today. I'm so scared God," the book begins. Margaret Simon lives on the Upper West Side, and likes it, but she's returned from summer camp to learn that she and her parents are moving to the suburbs. Several events ensue, none hugely dramatic: Margaret talks privately to God; Margaret's boisterous Jewish grandmother, who lives in Manhattan, regularly calls and visits, mildly rattling Margaret's parents; Margaret is aggressively befriended by Nancy, a classmate who lives down the street; Nancy recruits Margaret into a "secret" club with two other girls, which they name the Pre-Teen Sensations. The girls engage in amusing rites (eschewing socks, confessing crushes) and anticipate puberty with charming fervor.

As a narrator, Margaret doesn't demand much of us. She's sharply observant, but rarely demonstrative or ambitious; she doesn't have a burning passion for art or literature or sports. She loves her family, and her family loves her. School is fine, and so are her friends. But she's still trying to make sense of it all. There are things that she doesn't want to tell her friends-they all claim to like the handsomest boy in class, but Margaret likes Moose Freed, the fourteen-year-old who sings while mowing her lawn-and there are things that she doesn't want to tell her parents, such as the fact that she talks to God. Blume's prose, which does its heavy lifting behind the scenes, is airy and often dryly funny. ("Nancy decided we should all have secret sensational names such as Alexandra, Veronica, Kimberly, and Mavis. Nancy got to be Alexandra. I was Mavis.") She's particularly great at naming people and things, and her title conveys much of the book's subtle magic. Margaret's conversations with God are the kinds of openhearted expression that we all long for but might fear actually having, even with-or especially with-those closest to us. Such intimacy of feeling is also what many of us seek in a book, and, when kids pick up "Margaret," that's what they get.

After "Margaret" seemed to strike a chord, Blume went on to write " Then Again, Maybe I Won't," a kind of "Margaret" for boys; books in which teen-agers dated and even had sex; and impressively good books for grownups. But her books about puberty are the most piercingly memorable, precisely because they hinge on the thrill of expectation: bra shopping, buying pads from a drugstore and hoping the cashier isn't a boy, being seated next to a crush and occasionally bumping hands. In these novels, romance and adolescence are mostly theoretical, yet suffused with consequence and feeling.

Blume is an empathizer, not a teacher. The idea that her books succeeded because they prepared kids for adulthood was never quite right, and seems even less relevant today. (A friend who recently broached a period conversation with her daughter was startled by her response: "Mom, I already learned everything I need on TikTok.") What endures is the work's honesty and respect for uncertainty. Margaret's concerns-a changing body, a secret crush, a meddlesome friend-are relatable to anybody, and never fully resolved. Her conversations with God are like what Harriet the Spy writes in her notebook, or what I wrote in my cherished Judy Blume Diary, starting in third grade, or what thousands of kids wrote to Judy Blume herself, knowing that they could confide in her. (Many of these letters are preserved in Blume's archive at Yale.) We want intimacy, but not too much-we want safety and privacy, too.

When working at the store, Blume often eats on the roof, a performance space with pink accents, a green turf-like floor, and a panoramic view. The island is resplendent below: palm trees, a lighthouse, Victorian porches and turrets. Blume pointed to the west, where an enormous red-and-white cruise ship loomed like a visiting skyscraper. "That's what we don't want here in Key West. That's a two- or three-thousand-person ship." The tourists tend to throng down Duval Street, the boozy main drag, but "the ones who come here, and are book people-you know, we welcome all book people." A local paper lists the week's cruise-arrival times, like a weather report.

We met Cooper down the street, where the Tropic Cinema was playing matinées of "Women Talking" and "Amadeus," and where a handful of patrons were buying tickets. ("One for 'Talking Women,' " a guy said.) At lunch, at a restaurant with an entrée called Pizza Judy, the couple told me about their courtship, in Santa Fe, in 1979. Cooper was then a Columbia law professor, visiting his twelve-year-old daughter, and his ex-wife had set him up on a blind date. He knew "absolutely nothing" about Judy Blume, but soon he was singing "Love Is a Drug" into her answering machine, and enjoying her post-divorce novel " Wifey." They married in 1987. Cooper told me that they'd recently discovered that their forebears had come from the same Lithuanian shtetl in the eighteen-fifties ("Not a blood relationship!"), and the connection has been restored. Blume is close with Cooper's daughter, Amanda, as is her own daughter, Randy. When the girls presented her with Cardboard Judy, they'd also said, "Don't worry-if you're not here anymore, we're going to take care of each other." Blume got choked up remembering it.

We drove to the couple's home, which is part of a complex that involves a motorized gate. "It's not a gated community," Blume said, unprovoked. "Everyone in Key West has a gate code." In the garage, Blume's custom-designed pink Schwinn with hand brakes leaned on its kickstand. The apartment faces onto two enormous balconies overlooking the water, and its gleaming whiteness-white walls, white cabinets, white curtains-was offset by a haimish coziness: colorful quilts, daughter-made cupcakes. "This is our penultimate place," Cooper said.

"What's your ultimate one?" I asked.

"Probably ashes," he said. "You know what Judy wants to have, though? A tombstone that says, ' ARE YOU THERE, GOD?-' "

"- IT'S ME," Blume said, laughing. " JUDY BLUME, 1938-"

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Her most famous novel, "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," is finally being adapted for the screen. But its mysteries remain rooted in real life.