Deenie

Product Information

All of that changes, however, when she’s diagnosed with scoliosis and instructed to wear a body brace for the next four years. There is no other book that deals with the issue of girls becoming pubescent with such sympathy and wit in a manner they can so readily relate to. She isn’t sympathetic, at least not at first, with her mean-spirited and bitter internal thoughts about other children. The kindness of everyone at my primary school about my condition is far less clear in my mind than the people who did that. After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.

DEENIE | Kirkus Reviews

Over thirty years after Deenie’s initial publication, I was acutely aware of the severity of my curve from the start, right down to the degrees of the Cobb angle and the shape my back formed on the X-rays on the computer in the surgeon’s office. Through addressing white flight and prejudice, Blume offers young readers an approachable way to begin discussing privilege and discrimination. S. Blume’s frank representation of love and physical intimacy was groundbreaking, offering young-adult readers a clear example of empowered sexuality. What’s most astonishing about Judy Blume isn’t that her books keep selling 50 years after they burst onto the kids lit scene, but that they are no less potent than they were back then. The Judy Blume who appears at the outset of the film seems to have figured out the exact story she wants to tell.

The girl in Deenie's class who idolizes Deenie and copies her at every turn gets her own hair cut in the exact same way, much to Deenie's chagrin. She was a mean person before and hurt others feelings but now the only reason she’s changed is because she has a disability too that seems very vain. Deenie has been banned in some schools because of Deenie’s question about “touching her special place.

Review: Deenie by Judy Blume - Disability in Kidlit Review: Deenie by Judy Blume - Disability in Kidlit

The transformation of their relationship does not seem fully explained, with this action the only source of the change that I could uncover. Huge Schoolgirl: Midge, one of Deenie's best friends, is taller than almost every boy in her grade and incredibly self-conscious about the fact.While I saw my own experiences mirrored by the harsh negativity Deenie acts with, it sadly crossed the line from realism into sensationalism.