Deenie

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Barbara Curtis— A new friend of Deenie's; she suffers from eczema, which causes nearly everyone else to ostracize her. Deenie herself had not wanted to associate with Barbara initially, but having to be Barbara's partner in gym class allows Deenie to get to know her better. And it came pouring out. I mean there was just no struggle because I was just letting it all out,” she says. “I can put myself in that room just like that.” She pauses, makes an emotional little “ha” sound, and waves her hands. “It was such a thrill. It was so wonderful to get up in the morning and know that I had this thing that I really, really wanted to do.” Case in point: did I remember, from my first read, about Deenie's “special place” on her body, and how she loves to rub it and rub it, until she gets that good feeling? I don't think there is any Judy Blume book that I don't like. She is just that good at her craft. While I did like this one it was not my favourite one when I first read it. I think it had more to do with not really relating to the character as much although I sympathized with her. A failed cheerleading audition gets Deenie sent to the doctor, where she's eventually diagnosed with scoliosis, doomed to wear a brace for the next four years. I say doomed, but it's mainly her mother getting needlessly excited over it, not that her ignorance isn't utterly painful and enraging to watch. At the same time, beyond Deenie's immediate bonus of getting to drop the modelling auditions, is the uncomfortable revelation that she is now one of the handicapped kids, that she's been avoiding all these years.

Deenie: Book Summary – Judy Blume Deenie: Book Summary – Judy Blume

She is the founder and trustee of The Kids Fund, a charitable and educational foundation. She serves on the boards of the Author's Guild; the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators; the Key West Literary Seminar; and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Although the change in Deenie’s life as a result of her diagnosis with scoliosis is something I can certainly sympathize with, I found her character problematic. She isn’t sympathetic, at least not at first, with her mean-spirited and bitter internal thoughts about other children. The way she thinks and feels about those who are disabled or have even relatively minor health issues, especially prior to her own diagnosis, made me uncomfortable. I was recently watching Judy Blume interview, and it made me miss her books. I needed a light reading after Troubled Blood, and this was a perfect choice. This book, like many others written by Blume, has been banned in schools for themes deemed inappropriate for adolescents; in this case, talk about masturbation and sexuality. Deenie is on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 at forty-sixth.Deenie is one of the Judy Blume books I didn't read as a kid, and I was absolutely in love with everything about this book. (She's named after Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass! Judy Blume never says the movie by name, but it's totally that one! [That's probably because you don't really want the target audience to look up a movie where the main character goes crazy because of sex, right?]) I get frustrated when writers don't “assign” the right ages to their protagonists, and the 7th graders in this story were a lot more like 9th graders, and my 6th grader is a lot more like a 4th grader, so this was a read-aloud that required this mom to make a few detours. Still today.... I will always remember this title and the letter I received from Judy Blume. I related to the character with her struggles. That week] I touched my special place practically every night. It was the only way I could fall asleep and besides, it felt good" [p.79 in the 2005 Laurel-Leaf edition] and "Usually I take showers and get in and out as fast as possible. But the hot water [in the bathtub] was very relaxing and soon I began to enjoy it. I reached down and touched my special place with the washcloth. I rubbed and rubbed until I got that good feeling" [p.129].

Deenie – Judy Blume on the Web

Deenie was always told that she was beautiful and destined to be a model. However, everything changed when her PE teacher noticed that her walk was off, and her skirt was lower on one side. If you had 15 minutes with Judy Blume, what would you ask her? If those 15 minutes were cut to 10 minutes the morning of your Zoom interview, what would you cut from that list? I fantasized about asking: Is there any chance of you writing a novel from the perspective of a 50-something-year-old woman about midlife – menopause, divorce, grief, aging in general? Or if you got a letter from such a (hypothetical) person, what inspirational words might you share? The brace looks like the one Dr. Kliner showed us three weeks earlier. It's the ugliest thing I ever saw. I wish everything could stay just the way it was. Deenie is a novel by Judy Blume, first published in 1973.When I arrived, breathless, late on a Sunday after that long scenic drive, I learned the dreadful news: Blume regularly works at the bookstore on Sundays and yes, she had been in that day. I had missed her. I would never have ambushed her for an interview, but it would have been great to just say hello. When I finally got to interview her – a month later, over Zoom – and told her a (very condensed) version of this story – she seemed genuinely dismayed. “Oh I’m so sorry!” she said. “Did I know you were coming?”