Starring Judy Blume as Herself

FromWLRN’sArts desk

When I was in elementary school, I wrote an “autobiography” called “I Want to Be Like Judy.” It had a pink construction paper cover and came in second in the school library contest. Ineverimagined that 30-something years later, Judy would say to me, “Let’s take a selfie!” I loved all her books, butStarring Sally J. Freedman as Herselfwas one of my very favorites.I read it over and over. Ten times? Fifteen?

Sally finds herself transplanted from Elizabeth, New Jersey to Miami Beach just after the end of World War II. It was a time when so many Jewish families from the Northeast came to spend the school year in our warmer climate. Sally was 10 years old and discovering bugs and the beach and boys. That was Judy Blume’s life, too.So I recently asked her if she’d take a walk with me around her old neighborhood. She said yes, and we spent hours walking between her old apartment building on Pennsylvania Avenue, her old elementary school, Flamingo Park, and the beach.

Read the rest of the story over at WLRN.