Margaret has just moved to New Jersey from Farbrook, and soon makes friends with three girls. They share secrets, worry about boys, gossip on the phone, and their developing figures. Margaret is also preoccupied about what religion identity she is, being born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. Throughout the story, she "talks" to God about her own feelings and problems. .
There have been many attempts to ban this book, the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom states that it has been charged with "denigration religion and parental authority" and being "sexually offensive and amoral." (Naylor) Of course adolescents do experience the types of subjects Judy Blume writes about with explicit detail. .
"There should obviously be a place for all these concerns in teenage novels; but to write about them, as Judy Blume does, to the exclusion of everything else is doing the youth a great disservice." (Rees).
Although this novel may have a wide generation gap of interested readers, "the adult reader quickly becomes satiated, to the point of nausea." (Evans), young readers find somewhat of the novel humorous. But as Ann Evans states "much of this could be forgiven (the story line) if it were funny, but the odd incident apart, it is not." .
Many critics would state that Margaret's encounters are overly described, there are some key points in the plot line that many adolescents can relate to. "When Judy Blume writes there is an exception-it is directed toward each reader individually." (Russ) This novel is about learning lessons in life, and being confronted with hard choices you are faced with in life, with a bit of humor to liven it up. This novel is a very funny book, "with plenty of incidents to keep a girl reader, age 11 or 12 amused." (Arthur) Children will always go on needing reassurance on issues that will occur in their life and Are you there God? Its Me, Margaret., "is soft at the core, not hard.
