Good Parents: Frank Fenner is much more understanding and reasonable in regards to his daughters than Thelma is. While Thelma is emotionally manipulative and reacts to situations as if she were the victim or tries to even blame Deenie and Helen, Frank is very calm and doesn't hesitate to comfort his daughters when they need him and yet also firm in that Deenie needs to wear her brace which she eventually realizes is right of him to do.

Deenie - Wikiwand

Like most adolescents, Deenie has questions related to sex and sexuality. Mrs. Rappoport has a box where the girls put their questions. How is her willingness to be honest and open help the girls realize that their curiosity is normal? Later Deenie asks Helen what sexual intercourse feels like. Why does she think Helen will know? How is she surprised by Helen’s answer? What is significant about the bag that Deenie takes to Janet’s party? Explain why she doesn’t proceed with her plan. What are Deenie’s feelings toward the handicapped kids at her school, Barbara Curtis, and Old Lady Murray? Discuss how her scoliosis diagnosis changes her view of those with physical differences. At what point do Deenie and Barbara Curtis become friends? How do Janet and Midge react? Not as dramatic as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, but still a sweet and easy read. Good to share with your preteen. And sometimes I caught her reading on her own, forcing me to catch up with her at night. She gave it 3.7 stars, me, a little less.Beyond that, yes, Deenie is diagnosed with scoliosis, and her reaction to being “different” does feel authentic and her newfound compassion for others with differences is inspiring (Deenie was once a real sh*t when it came to the kids in the “handicapped” room). But, of course, Judy Blume would have seen right through that. Maybe she would have turned our conversation into some sort of counselling session. Ten minutes of comfort, but what good would that have been for this story? Yes, I’m going to count the books I read with my daughter in my GR Challenge. They’re books, aren’t they? And you think I’m not learning anything, I’m not experiencing anything profound from a YA master about the lives of preteens? Huh. If anything, I’m being taken out of that comfort zone, learning a new culture. Even better, I get to share it with my daughter, reading it out loud while she squeezes play-slime in her hands. That’s a reading experience for you. This book is ground breaking. I know that it’s been banned many, many times and continues to be banned to this day. There are 4 mentions of masturbation of just a line or two at a time for most of them and one that is a little longer in the context of sex education class. I wish I’d read this when I was the right age. It would’ve cleared a lot of things up. I’m glad it exists. When Deenie visits the hospital and is then X-rayed, her comments reflected my own experience as a child, from her hatred of the gown you have to wear to the feeling of time stretching out as you wait to be seen. While a minor point, this is admirable and shows the level of thought Blume put into the novel.

DEENIE | Kirkus Reviews

Books written by Judy Blume, at her bookstore in Key West, Fla., Jan. 20, 2023. SAUL MARTINEZ/The New York Times News Service Joe Roscow— Helen's sweetheart. He works at the gas station with Frank but aspires to be a forest ranger and a poet. Thelma has him fired not long after he and Helen are caught together. I hate it when my mother brags about me and my sister. "Deenie's the beauty and Helen's the brain." Deenie is diagnosed with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. What does Dr. Griffith, the scoliosis specialist, mean when he tells the Fenners that there’s “‘a strong familial tendency’”? (Chapter seven) Discuss her parents’ reaction to this information. How is assigning blame not helpful to Deenie?

Adults

Sadist Teacher: Deenie’s sewing teacher, Miss Wabash, who is “100 years old and very mean.” When Deenie had forgotten an assignment because she had gotten fitted into and was getting acclimated to her Milwaukee Brace over the weekend, Miss Wabash is unsympathetic. Not only does she consider Deenie’s excuse invalid, but she also says that she will only give half credit if Deenie does make up the assignment. My Beloved Smother: Thelma, hands down. She monitors everything that Deenie eats as well as criticizing her posture while making sure both Deenie and Helen are how she wants them to be ("Deenie's the beauty and Helen's the brain"). When Helen mentions trying out for the cheerleading squad, Thelma scolds her for the very notion, saying that Helen didn't need to be jumping around yelling cheers because of her brain. When Deenie is revealed to have tried out for cheerleading, Thelma scolds her for doing so as well, saying that if Deenie had made the team, she wouldn't have time for a modeling career.

Deenie – Judy Blume on the Web Deenie – Judy Blume on the Web

Alpha Bitch: While not a total bully, Deenie exhibits fairly strong tendencies of this early on in the story. She looks down a lot at the "handicapped" kids and treats Barbara Curtis, a girl in her class, like her eczema or "creeping crud" is actually a form of leprosy. As she winds up getting diagnosed with scoliosis and fitted for a brace, Deenie grows out of this mindset fast and starts becoming more empathetic to the point where she even becomes friends with Barbara. This is your usual cautionary tale, of not being needlessly judgmental, because one day it could happen to you, mixed with a heavy dose of little girls can be anything they want, so stop pushing them into ready-made boxes. And on that note, let's hear three cheers for Helen, Deenie's older sister: the brains and empathy of the family. Blume would teach me a lot over the years, but her books weren’t merely instructive. They took middle-grade lit – and with Forever – young-adult lit to a new level.

In 2015, Blume published what appears may be her final book. In the Unlikely Event, a novel for adults, is based on real events – three plane crashes in less than two months, very close to where Blume – then young Judy Sussman – lived. Because she remembered so little about these tragedies, it turned into a massive research project. I was desperate, I needed a creative outlet. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t,” she says. After publishing two books, she thought, “Okay, hmmm, now I know how to do this thing. Or I think I know how to do it. Now I’m just going to let it rip.” Helen Fenner— Deenie's older sister. Thelma exhorts her to keep up her grades, to the exclusion of all non-academic pursuits, in the hopes that she will eventually become a doctor or lawyer. Stage Mom: Deenie is blessed with not one, but two examples of this trope — her actual mother and "Aunt" Rae, who isn't Deenie's blood relative, but rather a close friend of her mother's — whose attitudes toward Deenie's scoliosis and its implications for her modeling career make her situation that much harder to take (both of them implying that Deenie herself is to blame for developing scoliosis). Deenie is relieved towards the end of the book when she realizes she probably won't become a model because of the brace and adds she never really wanted to be one anyway; it was all her mother's idea. This book, like many others written by Blume, has been banned in schools for themes deemed inappropriate for adolescents; in this case, talk about masturbation and sexuality. Deenie is on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 at forty-sixth.

Deenie by Judy Blume | Goodreads

These, along with a discussion about menstruation and masturbation [p.79-82] led by a gym teacher, are the core of the objections to the novel. [2] The book is otherwise usually described as insightful and accurate in portraying a young girl dealing with her diagnosis of scoliosis, as well as coming of age. I like how Judy Blume followed Deenie through her scoliosis, from the diagnosis down to the doctor's visits with details of the medical procedures, like how the brace was made. And Deenie's character development, where she realises she can relate to people like old lady Murray and Barbara and Gena, although that was a little too preachy. I also the development of her relationship with her sister Helen. This book would be m great for young children or preteens with scoliosis or a major illness, or those who know someone who does. Deenie Fenner— The main character. Thelma's plans for Deenie to become a model are in jeopardy when Deenie is diagnosed with scoliosis.So Deenie has scoliosis and has to wear a brace. This makes her hideously self-conscious and imagine not just being a teenage girl having to wear a brace. Imagine having to be "the pretty one" and wearing a brace. I get frustrated when writers don't “assign” the right ages to their protagonists, and the 7th graders in this story were a lot more like 9th graders, and my 6th grader is a lot more like a 4th grader, so this was a read-aloud that required this mom to make a few detours. I wish everything could stay just the way it was. Deenie is a novel by Judy Blume, first published in 1973. I was a good girl with a bad girl lurking inside,” Blume tells the film-makers. Born to a middle-class Jewish family, she toed a conventional line, wearing sweater sets and attending Sweet Sixteen parties and marrying her college sweetheart. It was while raising her own family in New Jersey that she began to write, a habit that did not earn the admiration of her neighbors or even her husband. He took a patronizing view of her efforts and appreciated that it was less expensive than a shopping habit. The writing is as good as always, but, as far as Judy Blume books go, the connection to the characters seemed off, and the topic felt somewhat contrived.