“The plants and animals stuff was a way to try to teach”: Ibid., May 31, 2022.
“The sperm, which come from the father’s testicles”: Andrew C. Andry and Steven Schapp, How Babies Are Made (New York: Time-Life Books, 1968), no page numbers.
“destroy the traditional moral fiber of America”: As quoted in Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century by Jeffrey P. Moran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 182; see also Gordon V. Drake, Sex Education in the Schools (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade Publications, 1968), pp. 16–18.
“You’ll find out when you’re thirteen”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, p. 163.
“There was something about eggs dropping down”: Ibid., pp. 163–64.
“that I once put a pin in my finger to draw blood”: Lee, Judy Blume’s Story, p. 28.
“Today I was feeling brave”: Judy Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, p. 156.
in a change originally suggested by Blume’s British editor: Judy Blume in conversation with Samantha Bee at an event at the 92nd Street Y on June 2, 2015. Accessed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7svP4zqCc0.
“I wanted to find out how it would feel”: Judy Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, p. 158.
“You were never allowed to talk about [menstruation]”: Telephone interview with Arlene LaVerde, October 12, 2022.
Kotex became a status symbol among young, middle-class women: Joan Jacobs Brumberg, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), pp. 44–45.
by approximately 100 million American girls: Sharra Louise Vostral, Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), p. 121. Accessed on Google Books: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Under_Wraps/PWA0yisYPnEC?hl=en&gbpv=0.
“If the egg is impregnated”: “The Story of Menstruation,” Disney, 1946. Accessed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG9o9m0LsbI.
“The narrator of the film pronounced it menstroo-ation”: Judy Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, p. 111.
“It was like one big commercial”: Ibid., p. 112.
“Everyone gets sex ed, all seven billion people”: JZ to RB, May 31, 2022.
The booklet, published in 1970: Box 67 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed May 11, 2022.
Chapter Five
Bad Kids
“Sometimes I am a mean and rotten person”: Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1972). I worked from the 2014 reprint published by Simon & Schuster, p. 46.
“I heard all about you and Moose Freed”: Judy Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1970), p. 133.
“My brother was so rebellious”: V.C. Chickering, “A Judy Blume Interview from the Bust Archives,” Bust, February 12, 2015, originally published in the 1997 Spring/Summer issue. Accessed online: https://bust.com/tbt-a-very-special-judy-blume-exclusive-from-our-bust-vault/.
“My mother used to say, ‘We never have to punish Judy’ ”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, p. 15.
“I wanted to say let me alone”: Judy Blume, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1970). I worked from the 2014 reprint published by Simon & Schuster, p. 113.
“the best looking girl I’ve seen in person anywhere”: Ibid., p. 43.
“When I read Joel’s paperbacks, I can feel myself get hard”: Ibid., p. 52.
prompting some rigorous tête-à-têtes with Jackson: Box 115 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.
“You’ll get a new one… from Rosemont Junior High”: Judy Blume, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, p. 29.
Kirkus said on October 18, 1971: Kirkus Reviews. Accessed through the New York Public Library.
“There are a number of different factors”: Telephone interview with Suzanne Kahn, October 14, 2022.
she “did considerable reading and six months of crying”: Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume, p. 87.
“I tried to reassure [Randy and Larry] but I really wasn’t sure myself”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, p. 90.
“I felt tears come to my eyes”: Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World, p. 38.
“I would rather have them fight than be divorced”: Ibid., p. 42.
“Sometimes I feel sorry for my mother and other times I hate her”: Ibid., p. 108.
“I stamped on it with both feet until there was nothing left”: Ibid., p. 170.
Early drafts of It’s Not the End of the World show Blume: Box 110 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 29, 2022.
“I have discovered something important about my mother and father”: Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World, p. 180.
And eventually, Jackson suggested that Bill’s second marriage plot: Box 110 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 29, 2022.
“All you care about is yourself!”: Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World, p. 115.
