And I got personally very happy that I let up on that. And it really wasn't until I met George, and we're together 43 years, I think. With the books, one book after another, after another, I had a lot to get out. And I think I was in a hurry because I thought I would die young. So I always thought I would die very young. I grew up in a family where my father's siblings (there were seven). It got harder when they were mid-teenage years. And so we were sometimes able to do that. So, it's not 'me and you.' It's 'Karen and her mother' or, you know, it's another character and her parent. We could talk about characters in other books, because talking about characters is so much easier than talking about yourself or your mom. I wanted desperately to be the kind of parent that my kids could come to.

I wasn't the mother that all of those kids thought I would be if only I could be their mother. It's easier to tell somebody who's not at the breakfast table the next morning, somebody you might never meet, somebody who might not even be real, but you believe that she is.

(That book, too, has been banned in various outlets, including, in the 1970s, at the primary school that Blume's own children attended.) Her 1970 book, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., told the story of an 11-year-old girl who worried that all the other girls were getting their periods, developing breasts and starting to wear bras - but she wasn't. When Blume began writing for pre-teens and teens in the '70s and '80s, young readers devoured her novels, which spoke to their hopes and anxieties. I mean, where are we? What country is this?' 'There's legislation going on right now that says that girls in elementary school are not allowed to speak about menstruation. 'They're trying to pass laws about what we can think, what our kids can think, what they can know, what they can talk about,' she says. In March, Florida's Martin County School District removed her 1975 novel Forever, which deals with teen sexuality, from its middle and high schools - a move she calls government censorship. It's been nearly 50 years since some of Judy Blume's books were published, but that doesn't mean they aren't still getting banned. Writer Judy Blume poses for a portrait at Books and Books, her non-profit bookstore in Key West, Fla., on March 26.

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