Reading Judy Blume at Yale

Abstract

The Beinecke Library at Yale University is the closest that one can get in real life to Dumbledore's pensieve.[1] When I visited Judy Blume's archives there, it was as if I had swirled a wand in the magical basin and pulled up vibrant episodes from the author's past. I have always had the sense that Judy Blume is an adult who understands and appreciates young people. After all, her characters share some of the same concerns that my friends and I had as tweens: when we would begin menstruating...