In the winter of 1951-’52, in the early days of commercial air travel, there was a series of plane crashes in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which was directly on the flight path for takeoffs and landings at nearby Newark Metropolitan Airport. Two of the emergency landings were in residential neighborhoods and killed people on the ground as well as passengers. The residents of Elizabeth, quite understandably, freaked out. There were protests and calls to shut down the airport and wild theories, including Communist sabotage, alien invasions, and a plot against the town’s children.
This is, in many ways, what Blume has been telling her readers for the past 45 years: even when the worst thing you can imagine happens (your little brother eats your turtle, the class bully turns on you, your father dies), life will go on. She doesn’t just offer empty reassurances, either. She’s right there with her characters—and, by extension, her readers—as they learn to adjust and adapt. This is why, even though it seems like just about everybody has read Judy Blume, her books still manage to feel personal, like a “secret club,” in a way that, say, the Baby-Sitters Club or Twilight, do not. They hold up, better, too: even to a grown-up, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Tiger Eyes are still great. And reading In the Unlikely Event, a book for adults, you realize that Blume has always written in the same deceptively plain language: she never talked down to her younger readers.
By Judy Blume
In conversation Wed 6/17, 7 PM Francis W. Parker School 2233 N. Clark 312-494-9509chicagohumanities.org $15
