Is there anybody out there?

Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Bradbury Press, 1970.

Handler, Chelsea. Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.
New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2008.

Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is one of the most frequently challenged books of all time. I read it about 10 times when I was a kid. It's a story about a young girl who is obsessed with getting her first period. She also worries a lot about religion because her father's side of the family is Jewish and her mother's a Christian. It's a really good book, but it was already a bit dated by the time I read it in 1975. I never really understood why they were always talking about belts. (I didn't really get Blume's Then Again, Maybe I Won't, either. I thought the kid was a little too old to be wetting the bed, and why the heck were his pants always getting tight?)

Chelsea Handler's latest book is way more risqué than anything Judy Blume ever wrote. These reviews of Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea really say it all:

"Chelsea Handler writes like Judy Blume, if Judy Blume were into vodka, Ecstasy, and sleeping with midgets and nineteen-year-olds."-- Jennifer Weiner, bestselling author of In Her Shoes


"Ms. Handler's style is a friendlier, more workaday version of the haughty self-abasement practiced by Sarah Silverman, leavened by the everywoman spirit of Kathy Griffin."--New York Times

ps. For more information about censorship and the freedom to read, please visit ala.org.

pps. I agree with the New York Times about Sarah Silverman--she comes across as being a bit snotty. It drives me nuts that my husband thinks she's so hot.

ppps. He also thinks Sarah Palin is hot.

pppps. I love him anyway.