TIMID CHILD BLOOMS INTO WRITER

As a child, author Judy Blume was extremely imaginative and shy, so she made up stories in her head. And while she still makes up stories, it's not so simple for her now.

"It takes a really long time to get an idea and then millions of rewrites to write it," she explained. "I've never really been able to tell a story out loud and make it up as I go along."

Despite the effort involved, Blume has written 68 books. While some have been targeted at adults, most have been written for children.

Some of her best-known works are Freckle Juice; Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; and Superfudge. She is working with ABC-TV on a two-hour movie based on Fudge-a-Mania and also a 13-part television series based on the other Fudge books, which will air next January.

Recently, by phone, Blume says she likes to write for children because she identifies with them.

"I'm really close still to the kid that I was, and there is something about kids that makes a lot of sense to me and often makes more sense to me than grown-ups," said the 56-year-old author.

Like many writers, she says many of the characters in her books are based on people in her life and on herself.

Her most autobiographical book is Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself.

"That was very much the kind of kid I was," she says.

"I kind of consolidated everything, but it was my family, it was very much my parents and my brother and my grandmother," she stated. "So that was the truest book I ever wrote."

Junior high in Florida

Like the title character, she spent part of her middle school years in Miami Beach. Blume's family had been living in Elizabeth, N.J., when her brother became ill, and she, her mother and brother moved to Miami to help him recuperate.

"Those two school years . . . were, without a doubt, the most important years of my childhood," she said.

"My mother was quite overprotective, and there was something about living there - the good weather, the playing outside until the sun set at night at 8 or 9 - it was a different way of life, and my mother was more loose . . . They were the most exciting years of my childhood."

Although Blume has a lengthy list of titles, she said she didn't start out wanting to become a writer.

"It wasn't anything that I thought about or planned for when I was growing up, or even when I was in college.

"When I was growing up in the '50s, if you were a girl, it was like you went to college to find some guy to marry because that was what your future was - marriage and having kids. Nobody ever told me that I could also work."

Blume married her first husband before she was out of college and soon had two children. It was then she started to write.

"I was at home with two little children, and I didn't have that creative outlet that I had always had when I was in school. Somehow I just started to do it without really thinking about it."

Blume started writing in the mid-1960s. Her first books, which she described as "bad imitations of Dr. Seuss," met with rejection. She persevered until her first book - The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo - was published in 1969.

Kids' praise is best

Since then, her books have sold millions and won numerous awards. But the best praise, she says, comes from the kids who read her books.

Through their letters, they tell her why they like her stories.

"It is because they identify with the characters and kind of really care about them," she said. "They somehow make them feel better about themselves."

But not all of the reaction to Blume's books have been positive. Some people have criticized the profanity in some books; other don't like the sexual situations some of the characters get involved in.

Blume's response is simply that she hears her characters talking when she writes and that talk often includes colorful language.

Furthermore, she says, all people think about sex, whether or not they read about it.

"(There are) a few censors out there who are afraid - they are afraid of language, they are afraid of sexuality, they are afraid of anything having to do with puberty.

"They would really like to control their children's lives, but since they can't do that and they can't control their children's minds, the next best thing for them is to control what their children read.

"It's like, `If my kids don't read this, they will never think about it.' But of course, most of us know that is not true."

A better way to handle controversial books rather than banning them is to talk about them, she suggests.

"I'd rather say to kids, which is what I said to my kids and what my parents said to me, `You can read anything you want to read, and if you have questions, I hope you will come to me and we can talk about it,' because that is a really good way to communicate."

Blume has learned to deal with the criticism.

"As a writer, you are open to all kinds of criticism, and I would like to say that I handle it better now than when I was starting out. It can be very, very painful.

"I don't think you ever completely get over it and say, `Oh, who cares?' . . . But you also with time begin to realize that this is one person's opinion."

Blume believes that censorship is never a good idea.

"The problem is that, once you allow it, every single person would have one book that they would say, `I don't want this book available in my library,' and if you allow everybody to say what book that is, you are going to end up with very little."

EDITED BY: Matt Fultz, 15.