Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

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Summary: WONDERFUL BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This book is a great book for young teens.This book helps you understand how to cope with things in a girls life.I really enjoyed this book.It helps alot when you look for advice.If I had read it earlier then I did, my life would have been alot easier.I think that all girls should read it.

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Summary: One of the Best!!!!
Review: I read this book years old. I believe I was about 11 or 12 years old. Ironically I share the same name of the main character, so I enjoyed the book even more. Over the years I discarded this book, but recently I decided that I need to have in my library despite being an adult. I recommend most of Judy Blume's book to the youth, she is a dynamic author and it will get your children to read more often.

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Summary: Growing up
Review: "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume is a must read for every girl in middle school. It takes you through the eyes of eleven year old Margaret Simon the year that she moved to Farbrook, New Jersey and her life was turned upside down. She encounters many growing of age conflicts like puberty, religion, popularity, boys, friendship and family all while trying to keep up with her secret clubs rules. She and her grandma have a special relationship that keeps Margaret questioning religion and what role it will play in her life as she grows older. This book has a colorful cover with the PTS club on it, but needs no illustrations because Blume's short chapters vividly describe each new conflict leading the reader to be curious about how it will be resolved. The flow of the book is rapid and hard to put down once started, especially if you can identify yourself with Margaret as every middle school girl can. Blume does not beat around the bush on growing pains and informs the reader that eleven going on twelve may not be so easy. This book can really get girls taking about their feelings of growing up and let themselves socially open up to various people like Margaret. This is a contemporary realistic fiction, but may be mistaken for a non fiction because the setting and characters of the book seems so real.

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Summary: I still love the book, but not changed
Review: I recently bought this book because it was one of my favorites as a kid and now, as an education student, I'm reading it for a class in children's literature. I still like it a lot, but I was disappointed to find that this edition had been changed! Nothing major, but just updated. For example, when she gets her period, it refers to her peeling the paper off and placing the sticky strip in her panties. There was no sticky strip in 1970! They had the kind with the belt and the hooks, which I remember because I had no idea what they were talking about and I had to ask my mom. Other references to hooking on a belt and stuff like that were all gone. That was part of what I enjoyed about the book, and part of what preserves it as a classic. That's almost as bad as giving the Four PTS's cell phones.

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Summary: Every girl must read this
Review: I first read the book when I was a bored fifth grader with too much time on my hands. I thought it would be alright to read this book because a friend of mine had read it and said it was pretty good. She then loaned it to me. I thought, Wow! someone who feels like me. I got lost in the pages of the book and really identified with Margaret and her struggles trying to find out who she is and what life is about at that age. I have read it several more times since the first read and now at 37 still find it as timeless and enjoyable as ever.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I read this book back in the 5th grade...almost 20 years ago. I learned more about puberty from that book, because it was from the perspective of somebody around my age. Our school (Catholic school) 'banned' it from being read (in school), but that made us girls hunger even more to read it. The school looked at it as being taboo, when in fact it was a brilliantly written story, and one of those books I look back as being one of the most influential books I've ever read. I think girls should be encouraged to read it, and not prohibited...besides, they'll read it anyway.

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Summary: Funny, yet imformitive
Review: Im the type of person who likes a good book with an interesting plot. However, I also enjoy books I can laugh at and identify with along the way. This book helped me understand the facts and struggles that lay before me. I enjoyed every page of this book and I recomened it to women and girls of all ages.

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Summary: I love this book so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I think that Judy Blumes books are so good. Espeically this one.I would reccemend this to anyone who likes Judy Blume.My favorite part was when they lied about wearing a bra. But, I can understand about how hard it was making new friends at school,I had to do that a lot of times.This book must've been really good becuase my mom said that she read it when she was a little girl.This book was really good.

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Summary: Anticlamactic ending, bad examples
Review: Excerpted from my review for a college Psychology course.
Margaret's family moves from New York City to New Jersey. Margaret suspects that her parents wanted to get away from her paternal grandmother, who was spoiling little Margaret with all kinds of presents. Such a move is probably not wise just before a child is getting ready for junior high school, which can be a disruptive transition to a child about to enter puberty, since she now has to deal with a new physical environment, and also separation from a loving grandmother. Fortunately she is able to form close friendships with three girls at the new school, and this peer group provided crucial support to help her adjust to the changes. This little same-gender clique was also helpful to each other as they experienced the biological transition of puberty; three of the girls "got" their first menstruation during this period before enter junior high. Their constant preoccupation about who "got it", their breast size, and boys, reflect typical early adolescent concerns. The book's humor reaches a high point when the girls' chant of "we must increase our bust" is overheard by the boys.
Another major transition during this period is Margaret's growing cognitive skills. She begins to realize that her friends may not be telling the truth, and can start judging boys beyond their outward appearances. She can now also view the adults in her world, such as her teacher, parents, and grandparents, in many dimensions, treating each as an individual with a complex and unique combination of motives and expectations. For example, when her maternal grandparents decide to visit, she begins to dissect not just their motives, but those of her own parents as well, and realizes that she must re-examine some of her long-held beliefs about the complicated factors that influence decisions in the adult world.
As part of her social transition into early adulthood, she begins to take on more independent activities. She takes the bus by herself into the city to attend a concert with grandma, and plans on a trip to Florida to visit grandma. Adults in her world are also beginning to treat her more like a young adult; for example, for the first time in Margaret's life her mother solicits her understanding about the complex issues surrounding her maternal grandparents' visit.
Margaret's quest to establish her own identity and assert her autonomy.is perhaps the unifying theme throughout this book. In particular, she becomes more and more concerned about her religious identity, since her father is Jewish and her mother is a Christian. All her friends seem to be either Christians or Jews (until she finds out that Laura is Catholic), and she needs to know whether she should join the Y or the Jewish Community Center. She begins her exploration by talking to God privately, then starts attending service at a Jewish temple and a Christian church, and even attempts confession to a Catholic priest!
The story becomes complicated when the grandparents on both sides of the family try to pull her in different religious directions. At this point we begin to realize the real motives for their parents' move to New Jersey: her grandma was "too much of an influence" because she insisted that Margaret was a Jew, while Margaret's parents wanted her to decide for herself. This is an interesting dynamic that offers many possible developments, but Blume does not explore them as deeply as I thought she would, considering that Margaret's struggle to find God is the title of the book. We only see the various forces influencing her, but there does not seem to be any definite resolution to this quest. At the end, Margaret thanks God not for some enlightening spiritual inspiration or direction, but for letting her have a "normal" introduction to menstruation, so that she is not the last in her clique to "get" her period. This seems to be too trivial a conclusion, even for an eleven-year-old, after such a long and thoughtful journey to find God.
I think this book reflects well many of the issues faced by early adolescents, particularly girls, in a middle-class suburban setting. A 6th-grader reading this book can learn some valuable lessons such as how not to treat an early-maturing girl like Laura. I am not so sure about the kissing game at Norman Fishbein's party: I sure hope that stuff did not go on at the parties my high school daughter went to, and this kind of activity is not something I would like to see suggested in a book for pre-teens. The parents in this book seem a bit too permissive in their parenting styles. For example, there should have been adult supervision in a preadolescent mixed-gender party, and Mrs. Fishbein does not seem to learn this lesson even after the kids made a mess of her ceiling with mustard. Fortunately the activities do not (apparently) get any wilder than kissing in a darkened bathroom. It also seems unusual for the father of a 6th-grader to have copies of Playboy magazine lying around the house. I suppose this is one way to expose the child to sexual content, but there are many better alternative material that are not so exploitative, and at least there should be some communication about the subject, rather than having the child steal quick glances at the centerfold when adults are not present. Margaret seems to learn more about menstruation and human anatomy from "adult" magazines and her fellow eleven-year-olds than from her parents!
Pre-teens certainly can find out something about themselves by reading this book. Perhaps boys will benefit more from reading it so that they can understand what goes on with the opposite sex at an age when they are beginning to explore the mysteries of romantic relationships. I would have preferred to see more authoritative parenting displayed as models of parental behavior, and a deeper treatment of how Margaret resolves her little identity crisis in faith.

Rating:
Summary: Are you there, Judy Blume? It's us, your readers
Review: I was a shadow of my current self when I read this book. But it made an impression on me. A terrific, terrific book. The honesty Blume employs is outstanding. I can remember laughing with Margaret, feeling her embarrassment, and the squeeze around my heart when she suffered disappointment. Blume is a truly gifted writer. ANY young female reader should enjoy this book. A rite of passage.