Margaret is 12 years old and has just moved with her parents from New York to Farbrook, New Jersey. She soon makes friends with three other girls and they call themselves 'the four PTS's' (Pre-Teen Sensations). They share secrets, gossip on the phone for ages, and worry about acquiring busts, boyfriends, bras and their periods…. Basically, [Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret] is a very funny book with plenty of incidents to keep a girl, and only a girl, reader of 11 or 12 amused—such as how you actually kiss a boy once you have him alone…. However, there are features of the book which are over-stressed and detract from the author's easy handling of most of the topics she covers. I refer to the excessive, almost obsessive, concern with a girl's period. Perhaps the physical details given could have fitted into the structure of the novel naturally, but when the author rhapsodises about the wearing of a sanitary napkin, the effect is banal in the extreme, and disbelief is total. Suddenly a sensitive, amusing novel has been reduced to the level of some of the advertising blurb in the 'confidential' section of a teenage magazine. You can carry didacticism much too far. This is the only novel by Judy Blume I have read so far, but I certainly want to read more, if only to find out whether she gets the balance right in them. (p. 22)
George W. Arthur, in Book Window (© 1978 S.C.B.A. and contributors), Summer 1978.
This is a free excerpt of 252 words. There are 257 words (approx.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Blume, Judy 1938–: Critical Essay by George W. Arthur Access Pass.
