BLUBBER
By Judy Blume
Bradbury Press, 1974
Category: Middle grade fiction
Remember that exercise I did last week, when I spent a couple hours remembering my elementary school days? BLUBBER popped up in third grade and I have not been able to shake the image of that red cover in library cellophane since. So when I was at the library this week, I took a peek on the shelf … and there it was: the red cover, the blue daisy, the stamps, the paper clip on white lined paper, the cellophane. I took it home and read it for the first time in twenty-seven years.
Nothing was how I remembered it. I had forgotten how mean Jill and the other kids were to Linda, the girl they dubbed ‘Blubber’ after her oral report on whales. How could I forget that? Did they not seem as mean when I was younger? Was that sort of behavior so normal that I wasn’t outraged? Am I just old, old, old? (Don’t answer that…)
I had also forgotten that the tables turned, in the end, and that Jill was made to suffer in much the same way as Linda. Or had I? The themes of “what comes around goes around” and “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” are such a part of my adult psyche. I believe them in my core. Did Judy Blume plant them in my subconscious when I was in the third grade?
PS. Author Tanya Lee Stone actually met Judy Blume. For breakfast. To talk about books and life. Can you imagine? Read this to learn more.