Yes, Blubber Is Banned!

Blubber is Judy Blume’s unflinching look at bullying through the eyes of Jill Brenner, a fifth-grader who participates in the relentless tormenting of her classmate Linda, nicknamed “Blubber” after a class presentation about whales. The bullying is cruel, specific, and escalating, and Blume doesn’t soften it. When Jill finally tries to stand up for Linda, the pack turns on her instead. Published in 1974 by Bradbury Press, it’s one of the rare children’s books that shows how bullying actually works: messy, contagious, and often unpunished.

The book was removed from an Arlington, Texas, elementary school in 1999 for “verbal, physical, and sexual abuse of student upon student.” In Elkmont, Alabama, it was banned from school libraries that same year for two uses of “damn” and one “bitch.” Earlier challenges hit schools in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin through the 1980s. The core complaint is always the same: the bullies don’t get punished, and no adult swoops in to fix things.

Why You Should Read This

Blume broke a rule that most children’s authors follow without thinking: she let the bad guys win. The bullies in Blubber don’t get detention. They don’t learn a lesson. Jill doesn’t become a better person through some tidy arc. She gets bullied herself and learns, viscerally, what it feels like. That’s a harder, truer lesson than any after-school special could deliver.

Parents who ban this book want stories where cruelty gets punished and virtue gets rewarded. Real schools don’t work that way, and kids know it. Blume trusted her readers enough to show them the ugly machinery of social power and let them draw their own conclusions. That trust is exactly what makes her one of the most important children’s authors alive, and exactly what makes censors nervous.