"Newspapers are very big on facts, I think," muses Davis (Davey) Wexler, the 15-year-old daughter left behind after her father was shot in the chest [in Tiger Eyes]. "But not on feelings. Nobody writes about how it feels when your father is murdered."

Judy Blume does. And even if your father hasn't been murdered, even if you're no longer 15, and even if you'd rather think about something else, she puts you inside that girl: a luminous-eyed (thus the title) brownette, built like a swimmer, at once achingly vulnerable, funny and tough. In the proper cadence of grief—paralysis, anger, catharsis, gradual acceptance—you know how it feels, slowly, excruciatingly, over a school year's time. And maybe that's why kids like Blume's writing so much. You can cry with a friend, and then when you can't stand any more, she'll poke you in the ribs with a joke. Blume's...