[In 1990, I wrote a series of articles for The Journal for Better Christian Homes, edited by Robert L. Waggoner. The five-part series was titled, “Christian Humanistic Values in Adolescent Literature.” I had not thought about it for a number of years until asked recently about “children’s” author, Judy Blume. My immediate response was that parents should keep their children from reading her works because of the content. One of her books, in this instance, had already been required reading in school, and the danger is, of course, that, once children like an author, they are likely to want to read more of that writer’s material, which is the problem. The books she wrote for the youngest age group are innocuous and very humorous, but the ones she penned for children just a little bit older take a decided turn toward humanism and sexual promiscuity. Below is a portion of the third article (Sept. 1990); additional comments are in brackets.]
Judy Sussman was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1938. Her family (of Jewish background) consisted of an older brother, her mother, and her father to whom she was particularly close; he died when she was 21. That same year she married John Blume, a lawyer. After sixteen years of marriage and two children (Randi and Larry), they divorced. She remarried, divorced again, and has been living with a man for a number of years. Information about various authors can be obtained from Something About the Author, which can be found in the Reference section of the Children’s department in most libraries of any size. Significant quotations by them are also included. [According to the Wikipedia, she married in 1987 George Cooper. She has won more than 90 literary awards, including the Library of Congress Living Legends award. She has also written three adult novels, which have sold in the millions. Wikipedia has more about her in the censorship section than all the other headings, thus foreshadowing her controversial work. It is not that she discusses difficult subjects—but her attitude toward them.]
Like Beverly Cleary, Blume deals with a number of realistic problems, and she is frequently entertaining, but tasteful is not the appropriate adjective to apply to her works, neither do they contain proper values, nor will many adults feel “safe” allowing their children to read her books.
Her entire philosophy of life runs counter to that of Christians, and it show frequently in her writing. Her parent characters, for example, seldom exercise any discipline on their children. In many of her stories, the reader finds some sort of abnormal behavior, and an element of vulgarity characterizes each book. Few of her characters seem to subscribe to any kind of definable moral system. One senses that Miss Blume tends to make up her own system (whatever it is) as she goes along.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
This is one of Blume’s books that has been removed from library shelves on occasion and not without reason. This story observes Margaret coming of age, trying to understand life. One of her friends proves to be a chronic liar; most of them think religion is boring, and they are all concerned about expanding their busts in order to be noticed by boys. In fact, at a poorly supervised boy-girl party the kids alternately “make out” and treat each other in an immature fashion.
What’s so objectionable about this story? The girls seem very sex-conscious. As Margaret changes into a swimsuit, she comments that Nancy (her lying friend) gives her “the creeps the way she sat on her bed and watched me” (6). Later, on that same page, Nancy tells her that she’s looked at the girls in her father’s Playboy and that she’s going to look like one of those girls when she gets older. Nancy also informs Margaret that all 14-year-old boys are disgusting and that they are only interested in two things: “pictures of naked girls and dirty books” (11), yet they do exercises with hopes of expanding their busts. At an all-girls’ party, they study the father’s Playboy (71); some of the girls confide that they have a brother or a father that walks around the house naked, and one had an aunt that spent a summer in a nudist colony (70).
Nothing is ever sorted out in the book as to what is myth and what is truth. Pornography is not condemned as being wrong or harmful; it’s presented as something that is normal and helpful. Do the girls get some factual advice from their parents? No, parents are generally despised. Consider this snooty remark: “My mother’s always telling me about when she was a girl. It’s supposed to make me feel that she understands everything” (24). Margaret decides on one occasion that her mother isn’t so bad—when she does what Margaret wants her to do (37). One girl states: “I hated my mother. I really did. She was so stupid” (124). Granted that young people occasionally feel that way or even go so far to say so to their friends, nothing in the story ever shows that such feelings are wrong, temporary, or even usually unjustifiable. But religion receives the worst treatment of all.
None of Margaret’s friends enjoy their religion. When Margaret informs them that she doesn’t go to Sunday school, they think she’s incredibly lucky (10). One laments, “I have to go to Hebrew school.” She would love to get out of it (34). When Margaret explains that her parents are nothing religiously, the response is, “How positively neat!”
The adults’ view of God and religion a la Miss Blume is pathetic. Margaret quotes her mother as saying that “God is a nice idea. He belongs to everybody” (14). The reason her parents practice no religion is that her father was Jewish and her mother Christian; therefore, to avoid confusion for Margaret, they decided to be neither (35). Their irrationality is that as long as they love each other, “…what difference does religion make?” (141). Her mother tells her on one occasion, “I just think it’s foolish for a girl your age to bother herself with religion” (56).
Margaret’s grandparents on both sides try to pull her into their respective religions. Margaret attends worship with both and prefers the Jewish a little, since she didn’t have to listen to a sermon (94). Her “Christian” grandparents tell her that a person doesn’t choose religion; they are born into it. They affirm that she was “born a Christian. You were baptized [sprinkled, undoubtedly]. It’s that simple” (133).
How does Margaret feel about all of this? Church doesn’t do anything for her. Attending worship didn’t make her feel close to God, even though she wanted it to (63). Later she says to God, “Why do I only feel you when I’m alone?” (120). At one point she gets mad enough to say that she doesn’t need anyone—even God (134), but then she concludes, “If I should ever have children, I will tell them what religion they are so they can start learning about it at an early age” (143).
What is so dangerous about Judy Blume is that she deals with things that young people are thinking about, but she gives no answers—unless it be that there are no answers. She presents only a hodgepodge of conflicting views but provides no guidance as to the right solution. One suspects that she does not believe that there are any solutions.
Sure, teens become interested in sex, but there are absolutes regarding it in the Bible (1 Cor. 6:18-20). Sure, teens invariably have conflicts with their parents, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t love each other. Sure, teens usually have questions about religion, but hopefully they can get better answers than the insipid, inane advice that flows from Blume’s adult figures.
God is not a nice idea that someone thought up, like Tinkerbell. God is reality, the Creator and Redeemer of all mankind. He is holy and just and will bring all men to account for their actions (and their ideas) some day. While a person might be born Jewish, no one is born into Christianity by physical birth. All are born into it by means of a spiritual birth (John 3:1-8). Furthermore, religion is not a matter of merely experiencing feelings (Pr. 28:26; Jer. 17:9); it is also a matter of knowledge and using one’s intellect.
There are always those who want to disregard the Bible in favor of making God into their own image. Such is evidently Blume’s philosophy. I tell God what I expect out of Him, and He answers my requests. Needless to say, however, He is not allowed to make demands of me or preach to me, or else I’ll get mad.
Is it any wonder that Christian parents get upset with Blume’s anti-Christian philosophy? Children can see through many things that adults miss, but on the other hand they lack the ability to discern between beneficial and harmful philosophies. If an author says it’s all right for children to look at Playboy, then they will likely agree. If an author’s attitude toward religion is blasé, that same attitude will likely rub off. It’s called influence, and without any hesitation, we say unequivocally that children would be better off without subjecting themselves to Judy Blume.
It’s Not the End of the World
Karen is the main character in this book, and her parents are going through a divorce. She fantasizes that she can say or do something to patch things up, but she eventually finds out she can do nothing. Her older brother Jeff also proves to be a problem. He disappears throughout most of the story but returns home at last.
The reader can sympathize with the girl’s problems—especially her thinking that the divorce is her fault, but the entire book is filled with anti-marriage sentiments which are never totally resolved. Her friend tells Karen, “My mother wants to marry him. Actually, my mother wants to marry anyone who is rich” (74). On another occasion her friend tells her that her father married her mother “because she was pretty and he wanted to show her off, like a new coat or something. He never really loved her,” she explains (110).
Karen begins the story, “I don’t think I’ll ever get married. Why should I? All it does is make you miserable” (1). She says of her teacher that, since she got married, she’s turned into a witch. We might see some humor in situations such as these—if Blume’s characters ever grew out of them, but they don’t. Karen affirms, “I’m not getting married” (79, 111).
[Something was omitted at this point in the published article, and we will skip the partial sentence, resuming with a parenthetical statement that completed the paragraph.]
(The trouble with these two “grown-ups” is that they act like small children and don’t even try to get along with each other.)
This book contains some profanity, some use of the Lord’s name in vain, and a smattering of disrespect for authority. Karen rejoices to herself in a smug way that her brother hitches rides all the time despite her mother’s warning against it. The very real dangers of hitchhiking never receive any attentions by the author or any of her characters.
[The remaining reviews of Judy Blume’s books will take more room than is available. Unfortunately, we have not yet arrived at the worst of them. Some might wonder what, therefore, in this genre could be recommended as safe and enjoyable for children to read. Below, by contrast, is a portion of the same article from the Journal (Part 3) which discusses Beverly Cleary and her “Ramona” series.]
Mrs. Cleary was born in McMinnville, Oregon, in 1916. She married in 1940 and has one daughter and twin sons. She has won several awards for children’s literature. In addition to winning the Newbery Award for Dear Mr. Henshaw in 1984, two of her other books have received the Newbery Honor Book Award: Ramona and Her Father in 1978 and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 in 1982. In her Newbery acceptance speech as recorded in the August, 1984 Horn Book, Mrs. Cleary credited her mother with some of her success: “My mother was an independent, determined, vivacious, intense woman, ambivalent about the life she led. She had an unshakable faith in the importance of books, reading, and libraries.”
In Mrs. Cleary’s books, the reader may be assured of a tactful solution to thorny (and sometimes tragic) problems which often occur. In Ramona the Brave, for example, our little heroine becomes so frustrated that she decides her only recourse is to say a bad word. She only succeeds, however, in making her family laugh at her because she doesn’t know any and therefore chooses a word that she thinks is bad but is not. (Had the story been written by Judy Blume, we shudder to think what the word might have been.)
Several of Cleary’s books have chronicled the adventures of the Quimby family. The word adventures does not refer to deeds of daring or journeys into the wilds but to the everyday happenings in this family’s life. Anyone who doesn’t think that daily household events can qualify as “adventures” just doesn’t know Ramona very well….
She learns that even though we cannot always excel in everything or convince everybody that we are “terrific” people we can nevertheless be accepted by others because everyone has some redeeming and endearing qualities. Young readers will probably see themselves in some of the things that occur and will benefit from the lesson described above.
In Ramona and Her Father, Mr. Quimby loses his job, which puts a strain on the entire family…. The funniest episode of all begins in a heated argument. Ramona’s older sister…complains that if the family is so poor, why doesn’t their father quit smoking. What follows is probably the most humorous campaign ever to get someone to quit smoking.
Ramona Quimby, Age 8 finds Ramona in the third grade, where she embarrasses herself severely by throwing up in the classroom. Later she gives a book report as it would be done on a television commercial. But the funniest episode involves Ramona [and her sister] fixing dinner all by themselves. What happens is more hilarious than most of us could imagine.
Beverly Cleary won the Newbery Award for Dear Mr. Henshaw in 1984. This…book concerns Leigh Botts, whose mother and father are divorced. Having been taught in school about writers of children’s stories, Leigh imagines himself writing to one—Mr. Henshaw. After four years of pretending to communicate with a writer, he is assigned (as a sixth-grade student) to write to an author, and he begins to correspond regularly with [the actual] Mr. Henshaw. He is surprised to receive a list of questions from the man in return for those he asked.
Eventually he begins his own diary and learns to enjoy writing. Encouraged to enter a contest, he wins third place and gets to eat dinner with a real author, though it is not Mr. Henshaw. The entire story is told in letter form. The sensitive subject of Mom and Dad being divorced is handled well, and Leigh must also learn to deal with other problems, such as his lunch being stolen periodically.
Cleary deals with a number of realistic problems that young people face, and she always does so in a tasteful manner. Proper values always underlie her books. They are safe for young people to read and entertaining for adults.
[This material appeared on pages 7-10 of the September, 1990, Journal, as mentioned previously. Hopefully the material presented herein may be of value to Christian parents in choosing what is appropriate and what is not for their children to read.]