A scene from ‘Judy Bloom Forever’ | Photo Credit: Prime Video
There are two ways to read the title of this warm, lively documentary. Judy Bloom is forever—considering that he wrote his epoch-making are you there god It’s me, Margaret. It’s 1970 and Margaret, a sixth grade student, still has concerns about boys, bras, religion and menstruation. A movie is coming out this year based on the book directed by Kelly Freman Craig with Rachel McAdams as Margaret’s mother, Barbara, and Kathy Bates as grandmother Sylvia.
Anyone who has read Bloom also knows that forever Named after her 1975 novel, which caused all kinds of storms for being the first to normalize teen sex. In the documentary, Bloom says she wrote the book after her 13-year-old daughter, Randi, said she wanted to read a book where teenagers have sex and don’t die afterwards!
judy bloom forever
Director: Davina Pardo, Leah Volchok
mould: Judy Bloom, Lena Dunham, Anna Konkle, Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee, Mary HK Choi, Jacqueline Woodson
runtime: 97 minutes
Story: Tracing the Story of America’s Beloved YA Author From a Suburban Housewife in New Jersey to Most Banned Children’s Author
The documentary begins with Bloom reading from his novel “Masturbation”, Deeni, “It’s not a word you should be afraid of,” says gym teacher Mrs. Rappaport. Let’s all call it masturbation. Bloom is a fairly agile 85-year-old, cycling to her nonprofit bookstore, Books & Books, which she runs with her husband, George Cooper, in Key West. The film goes back to Bloom’s student days at the all-girls Battin High School when she says she was a worried child growing up listening to the Nazis’ atrocities against the Jews.
Her marriage to lawyer John M. Bloom in 1959 weeks after her father’s death had a devastating effect on her. After the birth of her children, Bloom became a homemaker while her children went to nursery school. This part of the documentary looks straight out of Mad Man And you almost expect Don Draper to be sneaking around somewhere. After two years of rejection slips, Bloom is published there is a green kangaroo in the middlein 1969 and the rest is history.
Bloom draws on archival interviews as well as new ones to come across as sincere and warm and someone you’d love to hang out with like Margaret’s grandma. In addition to interviewing Bloom, her husband and children, judy bloom forever Features interviews with writers Mary HK Choi, Jacqueline Woodson, and Tyree Jones, actors Molly Ringwald, Lena Dunham and Anna Konkle, comedians Samantha Bee and Justin Chanda, senior vice president, publisher Children’s Trade Imprint, Simon & Schuster.
Bloom corresponded with some of her fans over the years, which formed the basis of Letter to Judy: What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You (1986) and the documentary features interviews with two of them. Blaming Pat Buchanan for censorship shows his strength and decency.
She reveals her playful side when she says that the four-syllable word that rhymes with duck is “a meaningless word intensive” according to the dictionary. There is sincerity and awe in Bloom’s joy at finding love in her marriage to Cooper. The shots of the couple laughing over Polaroid photographs are heartwarming.
Author Jason Reynolds says it best, “Judy didn’t write her books to be timeless. She wrote them to be timely and they’re so timely they’re timeless.”
Judy Bloom Forever is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video