Yes, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Is Banned!

Margaret Simon is eleven, has just moved to a new town, and is worried about everything. She wants to get her period. She wants breasts. She wants to figure out whether she’s Jewish (like her father’s family) or Christian (like her mother’s). She talks to God about all of it, directly and without ceremony, in conversations that feel like diary entries addressed to the universe. Judy Blume published the novel in 1970, and it became one of the most important books in children’s literature. It also became one of the most banned.

Blume has said her own children’s elementary school principal refused to shelve it because it mentioned menstruation. The Gilbert Elementary School District in Arizona removed it from libraries in 1980. Tuscaloosa, Alabama challenged it in 1982. Schools in Minnesota required parental permission the same year. The challenges have never really stopped: the book has appeared on banned lists in Florida and Texas as recently as 2022 and 2023. The objections cite sexual content (the book discusses periods, bras, and the normal anxieties of puberty) and religious concerns (Margaret explores multiple faiths without settling on one).

Why You Should Read This

Margaret’s voice is so natural you forget someone wrote it. She’s awkward, earnest, and specific in the way that only an eleven-year-old can be. She does exercises (“I must, I must, I must increase my bust”) and compares herself to every other girl in her class and talks to God the way you’d talk to a friend who might not be listening. Blume captured something true about that particular age: the feeling of your body and mind changing faster than you can process.

The book’s power is its honesty. Blume didn’t condescend to her readers or pretend that puberty was something to be embarrassed about. She wrote directly about the things girls were actually thinking and feeling, and for many readers, it was the first time anyone had done that. The fact that people are still banning a book about a girl getting her period tells you exactly how much that honesty is still needed. Some things haven’t changed since 1970. Margaret still matters.