Best-selling author Judy Blume built her reputation by taking children's lives and what they cared about seriously before many other children's authors gave them the same credit. Across characters like Margaret Simon, Peter Hatcher and his little brother Fudge, Deenie Fenner and Sally J. Freedman, she spoke to generations of children about subjects like puberty, religion, sibling rivalry, body image, divorce and more. In the new book Judy Blume: A Life, reporter and historian Mark Oppenheimer traces Blume's life -- her childhood influences, marriages, decades-long career, the stories behind how her books developed and sold and how she was catapulted into the public eye over censorship and book banning. This excerpt from the book shares the origin story of the first in the Fudge series, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, starting with a bizarre newspaper clipping about a swallowed turtle.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was accepted and fast-tracked for publication in March 1972. It was a long time coming.
On May 31, 1968, The Courier-News, Judy Blume's local newspaper, ran a story on its front page with the headline "Gulps Live Turtle, Boy, 2, Faces Surgery." Willie Mae Bartlett, Judy's housekeeper and nanny, clipped the article for her. According to the report from the Associated Press, little Brad Haines of Bountiful, Utah, "swallowed the turtle, Myrtle, earlier this week. X-rays Wednesday showed it to be alive." Doctors said that if the boy did not pass the turtle soon, surgery would be necessary. As it happened, Brad and the turtle parted ways naturally, without surgery, according to later news reports. But Judy could not get the story out of her mind, and she made a toddler swallowing a turtle a central plot point of a picture book called Peter, Fudge and Dribble.
The manuscript, about Peter Hatcher, his little brother, Fudge (based on Judy's son, Larry, except that Larry was not a turtle swallower), and an unfortunate turtle named Dribble, took shape at almost exactly the same time that Judy was writing Green Kangaroo, another tale of sibling rivalry. Judy submitted the book widely. In November 1968, Macmillan sent Judy a form letter rejecting Peter, Fudge and Dribble. In January 1969, Simon & Schuster sent a letter saying they had given the manuscript "several readings" and "with much regret" they felt it wasn't right for them. That same month, there was a letter from Houghton Mifflin reading: "Several of us have had fun reading it. Unfortunately, however, we do not feel we can make you a publication offer. For us there didn't seem to be any real build-up of plot or story line." Over the course of 1969 and into 1970, the manuscript was also rejected by Parents' Magazine Press, Harper, Seymour Lawrence, Pantheon and Random House.
By the time Judy had accumulated this pile of rejections, she was working with her editor Dick Jackson and Bradbury Press, which had published Iggie's House and accepted Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Naturally, she now showed them her older book, the one without a home, Peter, Fudge and Dribble. But Jackson, already facing a Blume backlog, was wary of accepting yet another book, especially one for younger children, which was not Bradbury's audience. "Well, Judy," Jackson said to her, "it looks like you're going to be too prolific for us. Why don't you find another publisher for your younger children's stories, and we'll just concentrate on your books for older kids."
Ann Durell, a children's editor at Dutton, invited Judy to meet with her. Over lunch, Durell suggested that Judy turn her short picture book into a longer chapter book. The turtle-swallowing episode could be one chapter in a book that followed the Hatcher family through a whole series of hijinks.
Within a month, Judy had rewritten Peter, Fudge and Dribble into a chapter book. "Ann loved the book," Judy said. "It was exactly what she had hoped for." While most of Judy's books went through multiple rewrites, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing went through none. It's easy to see why: the book is a nearly perfect domestic comedy for the 9-year-old set, with easy appeal for children as young as 2 and adults of any age. The finished version sees its narrator, the fourth-grade nothing Peter, through an absurdist-tragic arc that starts on page one when he gets his turtle -- "I won Dribble at Jimmy Fargo's birthday party," the book begins -- and ends in the final chapter with Dribble’s untimely demise in a 2-year-old’s gut. Peter gets home and heads to his room to check on his turtle, who is not in his bowl. "Where is he?" Peter asks Fudge. "What did you do with my turtle?"
No answer from Fudge. He banged his pots and pans together again. I yanked the pots out of his hand. I tried to speak softly. "Now tell me where Dribble is. Just tell me where my turtle is. I won't be mad if you tell me. Come on, Fudge . . . please."
Fudge looked up at me. "In tummy," he said.
"What do you mean, in tummy?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
"This one," Fudge said, rubbing his stomach. "Dribble in this tummy! Right here!"
Like Brad Haines, the real 2-year-old who swallowed the turtle in Utah, Fudge soon passes the turtle. But if it doesn't go well for the turtle, who has met an ignominious end in a toddler's bowels, it does end well for the turtle's owner, Peter. The book concludes with Peter’s father bringing him a large box containing a present. “I put my hand inside the box,” Peter says. “I felt something warm and soft and furry.” It was a dog, “a dog that’s going to grow quite big,” his father promises. “Much too big for your brother to swallow.” Peter names the dog Turtle, he explains,“to remind me.” It’s a small, poignant note to end on, and it represents the growing deftness of Judy’s writing, this pivot from the hilarity of Dribble’s demise —Tales and its sequels would establish Judy as one of the great comic writers for children — to the bittersweet acquisition of a new canine friend.
On January 26, 1971, Ann Durell wrote to Judy, complimenting her chapter titles — “The ones you have done so far are superb” — but noting that Peter, Fudge and Dribble needed a new title. “The title happens to be a problem not only because I thought you might do one that would be a bit more evocative and descriptive,” she wrote, “but because we have a book on the same list called PETER POTTS. If, having racked your brain, you don’t come up with an inspiration, we will ask the author of PETER POTTS if he can think of something else.”
In the end, Clifford B. Hicks, the longtime editor of Popular Mechanics, was allowed to keep Peter Potts as the title for his new children’s book. Judy provided Durell with a long list of alternate titles; one was a home run. “Well, what do you know,” Durell wrote on February 22,“we all absolutely love TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE NOTHING, so that’s what the former PETER,FUDGE, AND DRIBBLE will be called henceforth.”