I remember reading Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret when I was in year 7 at a catholic high school in a small country town – many, MANY years ago. I have a vague memory that there were a group of us who passed the Judy Blume books around among us, like a clandestine secret, but I can’t actually remember if they were banned from our library, or we had heard rumours about them being banned elsewhere, so we felt all renegade and rebellious. I suspect it was the latter, because I never felt restricted in my reading choices from our small country town catholic school library – I am the reader I am today in part because of the literary journeys I took whilst there.

Revisiting Margaret today was a joy. I remember feeling completely seen by her – or, rather, in seeing parts of myself in her experiences, and in the paths taken by Nancy and Laura in particular. Despite being 50 years old this year, the struggles of Margaret and her friends hold up now. I think that’s probably a testament to how ground-breaking and revolutionary it was at the time of its original publication. Thank you, Judy. I’ll be revisiting more of your work soon, I think. There are a lot of old friends I feel the need to catch up with. It’s been far too long.