Image source: Getty/Victoria Sirakova

It’s a good time to be Judy Blume. In April, the screen adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” made its way to cinemas, 53 years after the seminal YA novel was released in 1970. In the film, directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, Abby Ryder Fortson plays Margaret with Rachel McAdams like her creative mom, Barbara. That same month, Amazon Prime Video also released a documentary about Blume, titled “Judy Blume Forever”. For someone who has spent much of the last few decades out of the spotlight, was this renewed attention shocking?

“I love this movie so much. It’s my heart. That’s all,” Blume told POPSUGAR of “Are You There God?” But for the documentary, it is a little more complicated. “It’s a very strange thing and a different thing,” she says. “I feel good celebrating ‘Margaret’. I feel weird celebrating myself. But I’m very happy with this documentary.” She’s particularly pleased that the documentary tackled the censorship her books faced in the 1980s – the kind of banning that, unfortunately, is becoming more and more common in America – and that it shed light on some of the letters she received from children over the years. She even met some of these children as adults.

Speaking on the book ban, she says: “It never occurred to me that all of this would happen again. They’re children, aren’t they? Puberty is a good thing. It’s going to happen to your kids whether you like it or not, moms, so you better be prepared.” The “best thing” parents can do for their children is to be able to talk about the challenges of growing up, not hide them. And Blume’s books have always been honest when it comes to topics like sex, puberty, love, death and other “adult” topics that children inevitably face.

Blume has also attended recent events where she met some celebrity fans, but she’s a little shy to discuss it. “Are you there, God? director Fremon Craig is not. “Judy was a real rock star,” she tells POPSUGAR of a gala they attended together. “There were a million celebrities in that room, and they all wanted to talk to Judy.” Blume also co-founded a non-profit bookstore in Key West, FL, and she says a lot of women walk into the store and cry when they meet her. She explains, “It’s because I take them back to their childhood. They look at me, they remember. And that’s very sweet.”

Fremon Craig, who also wrote “Are You There God?” adaptation, says she read her first Blume book when she was 11, then quickly “inhaled” the rest. This one, however, was his favorite. “I felt so close to Margaret, I was so connected to her,” she says. “I was also a late bloomer. So I prayed to God for boobs.”

Years later, after the release of her first film, “Edge of Seventeen” in 2016, she reflected on what she wanted to do next and explored the authors she connected with the most. His mind went straight to Blume. “I started re-reading his work, and when I got to ‘Are You There? God, It’s Me, Margaret’…I was sobbing like a baby,” says Fremon Craig. She quickly contacted Blume to see if she could get the rights.

Blume told Fremon Craig and the producers that she thought the film would only resonate with the “nostalgic crowd”. “It’s the people who grew up with this book who are going to really want to see it,” she explains. But she was pleasantly surprised – and happy to be wrong. Many people who read the book as preteens brought their young children to screenings, and it resonated with them as well. “A girl came to this screening in Key West in a little pleated skirt, the skirt that Margaret wears in the [movie] poster, and she did it herself,” Blume shares.

Image source: Everett-Collection

Blume also praises Fremon Craig for how she increased the role of Margaret’s mother in the film. “In the book, everything is from the point of view of a 12-year-old girl,” Blume explains. “She doesn’t really know who her mom is or what her mom thinks, and Kelly gave her life. I love that part.” Fremon Craig gives even more credit to McAdams’ performance. “She lives it so well and transmits all the facets of being a mom, because it’s complicated.” Blume adds that the film’s Barbara is the “mother I want to be when I return to another life”.

This author from POPSUGAR had a little problem with the movie when I watched it. When I first read the book in 2000 after finding it in Ms. Mangano’s third-grade classroom library, I was struck by the description of sanitary napkins from the 1970s, which involved wearing a belt and then pin the pad between them. This detail did not happen in the film. Blume and Fremon Craig say it’s because there were actually two versions of the book.

The first copies included pads and belts. Blume says she remembers when sanitary napkins were replaced by the sticky pads most people know today shortly after “Are You There God?” has been published. “It was my UK editor who said to me, ‘How do you feel about changing that? [in the book]?'” Blume recalled. She agreed. “I don’t change my books. I don’t believe in their update. But I think it’s important, because it was something that took the kids out of the story. They were so curious [the pads and belts]they forgot they were in a story.” Fremon Craig said she always grew up with the updated version, so she didn’t even know about period belts until the author told her. speaks at a production meeting.

“Now we have these two groups in the world, and they don’t agree with each other,” Blume says. People reading the old copy (myself included) want the belts to stay. The other group is happy that the change has been made. Blume is fine in the second camp. “I don’t have good feelings about menstrual belts,” she says.

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is in theaters now. “Judy Blume Forever” is streaming now on Prime Video.