Judy Blume changed the way coming-of-age stories were told.

Lena Dunham, Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee and more celebrate the best-selling young adult author in the new documentary “Judy Blume Forever,” which premiered Saturday at Sundance Film Festival and starts streaming April 21 on Amazon Prime. Blume, 84, whose novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is coming to theaters April 28, reflects on decades of writing stories that she felt children wanted to read – and had a right to know about. 

“She allowed young women to be as complicated and messy and dark and light and funny as we are,” Dunham says in the documentary. 

Here’s what we learned from “Judy Blume Forever.” 

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Why Judy Blume felt a calling to write about taboo topics 

Blume’s young adult novels, most of which were published between the ’70s and ’90s, dealt with topics that adults largely did not discuss with children – girls especially. She wrote about puberty, masturbation, curse words and grappling with existential thoughts. 

It stemmed from Blume’s own experiences as a child, during which she recalled feeling anxious about the world around her and resented adults keeping secrets from her. 

“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” published in 1970, thrust Blume into the spotlight. She knew it would be “terribly controversial” among adults, but that tween girls would love it. 

“I remember being that age,” Blume says in the documentary. “I was fascinated by the idea of changing bodies and breast development, for me getting my period. I was obsessed by it. I wanted to write the truth, the reality of being that age.” 

Subsequent novels also sparked myriad fan letters from young readers, thankful to have found a grown-up willing to be honest with them. One reader, who appears in the documentary as an adult, frequently wrote to Blume about trying to cope with her brother’s suicide after he had sexually assaulted her for years. Blume’s responses saved her life, she says. 

Still, parents pushed back against Blume’s work. 

“I heard from a lot of people saying, ‘I won’t let my child read this book,’ ” Blume says of her 1993 novel, “Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson,” which features a scene in which a teenage boy drops an f-bomb. 

“Your child is probably out there on the playground yelling (the f-word) all over the place,” she says. “Because it’s just a word. If you look it up in the dictionary, which I did, it says ‘a meaningless word intensifier.’ But it’s real. And Charles meant it. And so there it is.” 

Banned books: Controversial then and now

Blume’s whole career has centered around the idea that children have a right to get answers to their questions. So when the Reagan administration brought book banning to the forefront of national conversation, she became a staunch defender of both the content of her own books and others facing book bans.

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