Friday, July 17, 2015

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume (book review)

Starring Sally J. Freedman as HerselfStarring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book in fourth grade when I went through my Judy Blume phase. All my friends who hadn't yet started their periods raved about Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret but to someone like me with precocious puberty, Margaret was passé. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself was my favorite Judy Blume novel.

I remember really identifying with the main character, a ten year old girl who leaves behind her beloved father in New Jersey to move with her mother and grandmother to Florida. I could relate: half of my beloved family stayed in St. Joseph MO while the other half moved to Kansas City when I was six. It comforted me that my feelings of loss and loneliness were not weird, but something that other kids my age go through when their family breaks up.

It felt like I had so much in common with this fictional Jewish girl from the East Coast in 1947, even though I was a Christian girl from the Midwest in 1981. That's a testament to Blume's strong characters and storytelling. I'd recommend this classic to anyone.

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