Blubber

Rating:
Summary: Best Book I've Ever Read
Review: This book helps people of all ages know what is and isn't acceptable forms of teasing. It shows what is like to be on both sides of the comment. I think it ought to be mandentory for all children to read this. I read it 11 yrs. ago and I still think about it. It is what really got me into reading. You will love it. Even though it has a moral mesage, it is hilarious, you'll laugh til you cry.

Rating:
Summary: Very Different
Review: All I can say is that it was a very different book. It is about a girl in 5th grade who isn't a very pleasant child. She makes fun of a girl who does a report on Whales and the girl is a little fat so from then on, they call her Blubber. Untill one day everything turns around and her life is turned upside down!! I am not going to tell you anymore, you have to read it to find out!

Rating:
Summary: A lesson to all people to learn
Review: I liked reading this book. I think everyone should read it. It helps to show why people need dignity and compassion towards other beings.

Rating:
Summary: Not suitable for children
Review: I found this book troubling and totally unfit for children. While it passes itself as being helpful to those who are being teased at school, it contains no characters that I liked or could identify with. The main character least of all. She is crass, selfish, foul-mouthed and totally unapologetic for her inappropriate and sometimes cruel behavior. She calls her teacher a bitch, and among other gems threatens her brother with something like, "Shut your damn mouth or I'll bash your face in". Really charming stuff. The parents smoke and drink and encourage their daughter's swearing. Teachers are depicted as clueless and school as pointless and boring. The story ends with no real resolution. The guilty go unpunished for all of their horribly cruel acts to other children. The main character and others show no evidence of having learned from their mistakes. Most unrealistic of all, the victim of the worst teasing gleefully joins her torturers to start picking on someone else. The author must have thought that she could use her fame to get away with anything. She seems to forget that the book is targeted towards children. A little thing called an editor might have helped, but this book is unsalvageable.

Rating:
Summary: The best book ever
Review: I found this book incomplete. It's missing a crucial element: its resolution. True, Jill finds out what Wendy is really like, but no one made up with Linda. I went through some of the things Linda had to go through (thankfully not as severe). It really bugs me that people spent the whole book treating Linda so terribly and no one even tried to make up with her. I thought that, at least after what Jill had been through, she'd want to try to make up with Linda. In the end, she should have decided to try sitting with Linda, instead of Rochelle. Or maybe Linda and Rochelle. I think that would have sent a strong and important lesson to children. Without apologizing to Linda, the book has a gaping hole. The kids learned not to follow Wendy, but not how to make things right with those they hurt while following Wendy.

Rating:
Summary: We've All Been There!!!
Review: At points this book was tough for me to read. It was
like living through that time in my life again, something I'd never do. Once was enough!

Everyone has to have their best friends, and the people they pick on. Not everyone is the same, and those who are different get picked on.This book was very heartwrenching, but also very realistic.

I liked the realness of this book, although I don't like the ideas it may give innocent child. This reviewer
is giving this book a total of five stars:)

Rating:
Summary: No more at this point
Review: Although I had bitter feeling after I read this book which reminded me of my school time with bullying girls, I found this book still depicted bullying and how things get worse easily between kids in a cute way. They are no more at this point.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books when I was younger
Review: I know one of the kid reviewers here said this book was "not for boys." I have to disagree with that, because I am male and this was one of my favorite books when I was a boy. When I was a child, I worshiped Judy Blume - I loved the "Fudge" series, "Are You There God?..." and "Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself." But this one rang especially true for me because I, like Linda "Blubber" Fischer, was picked on for being overweight when I was a child. I still struggle with my weight today (and "struggle" is the operative word here). I think there are two real messages that we can derive from this book. There's the obvious "Golden Rule" lesson - treat others as you'd like to be treated, which Jill learns all too well when she dares to challenge Wendy's authority and pays the price when she becomes the target of the other kids' teasing. She also learns that actions have consequences when she and her friend Tracy egg a neighbor's mailbox, are caught in the act, and have to do yard work as punishment. But as one of the other reviewers pointed out, there's another lesson, and it's about standing up for yourself.

Linda isn't the largest girl in the school, but she's picked on because she doesn't bother to stand up for herself. Not to say that she "asks for it" - certainly no one deserves the kind of teasing and torment that she endures - but she makes it so easy for Wendy, Caroline, Jill et al. to walk all over her. I know because I was teased myself for many of the same reasons. The narrator, Jill, is a much stronger person than Linda - when Wendy wants to deny Linda a lawyer in her "trial," Jill insists that every trial needs to have a defense and a prosecution lawyer and, when Wendy still refuses, cancels the trial. That's why Wendy turned the rest of the class against Jill - because Jill stood up for Blubber, yes, but more so because Jill had the gall to contradict Wendy. This rings true as well - sometimes standing up for yourself and doing the right thing will have consequences. When this happens, you have to keep standing up for yourself, keep on fighting and don't give in. This is a lesson that Linda still hasn't learned by the end of the book. Jill, on the other hand, finally got sick of being teased and lashed out back at Wendy, and the teasing stopped. In a sense, Jill is both the villain (because she went along with the teasing of Linda) and the hero (because she fought back) of this story. That's what you need to do sometimes - fight back. Standing up for yourself will make you a stronger person. At the end of the book, although Jill may not be any more sympathetic toward Linda than she was before, and while she and Linda certainly haven't become friends, she's stronger and more sure of herself, and hopefully she'll also remember how much it hurt when she herself was teased and think twice before teasing someone else again. One is led to believe that since she's more independent now, she certainly won't blindly go along with what the class "ringleader" tells her to do. It's kind of a bittersweet ending - sweet for Jill, still bitter for Linda. It's unconventional, which is also part of what makes "Blubber" special.

I'm not sure I would recommend this book to very young readers because it's so gritty and honest - it doesn't sugarcoat anything, and while there are some funny moments (i.e. the "nobody sings 'breast' but Blubber" incident), even those are tempered with bitterness: think how poor Linda must have felt, being the only one to sing an embarrassing word like "breast." But readers of fourth-grade age and older will get a lot out of this book. There are some mild cuss words, but nothing that I think parents need to get their knickers in a knot about, and I certainly wouldn't advocate banning the book just because of that. Judy Blume's greatest strength has always been that she tells it like it is, and this classic is no exception and rings as true in 2004 as it did in 1974. Recommended.