That could explain why would-be censors are spending so much energy on school libraries and physical books: An offending paperback, at least, can be stopped in its tracks. YouTube and TikTok are teeming with content that gives curious kids the lowdown on any subject imaginable. It’s getting ever harder to hide that knowledge in the digital age, when information about any subject is accessible in moments. (Had its sponsor read Margaret, he might have known that a girl can get her period in fourth grade.) Even if these bills never make it into law, they’re living symbols of the vast divide between what some adults want kids to know and what many of those kids can find out on their own. Last month, the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill that would bar schools from discussing menstruation until middle school. The current angst over books ties into broader concerns about access to information. Last year, the Idaho legislature debated a bill that would have subjected librarians to criminal penalties for “disseminating material harmful to minors.” House this spring, pointedly reminds parents that they can inspect books in school libraries. Legislation dubbed the “Parents Bill of Rights,” which passed the U.S. The kinds of novels Blume pioneered, probing how sexuality looms in teen and preteen lives, are torrid political symbols right now in Congress, state legislatures and school boards across the country.

They’re a secret conversation that feels like independence. Blume’s books matter because they give teens and preteens the kind of information that leaves adults unsettled - and because they’re books, consumed privately, at one’s own pace, on one’s own terms. When I saw it at a preview screening outside Boston, I was struck by the difference between reading the book and experiencing it in a crowded theater. Now, decades later, another once-taboo Judy Blume book, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, is hitting theaters in movie form. We passed the slender volume around, girl to girl to girl, fully aware that the adults wouldn’t approve - and also, that they couldn’t stop us.

It was a story about teenagers and sexual discovery, and our friend knew precisely which pages, deep in the book, contained the passages we really wanted to read. But at recess, she led a few of us down a grassy hill, out of sight of the playground, and lifted the cover to reveal a secret: She had taken a razor blade to the pages and carved out just enough space to fit a paperback copy of Blume’s 1975 novel, Forever. A classmate came to school one day with a hardcover version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I was in fifth grade, longer ago than I care to say, when I first discovered the exquisite power of a Judy Blume book.

Forever... by Judy Blume