Judy Blume is very well known for her novels, starting with the wonderful stories about Fudge for lower primary classes, moving through the teens with stories for every teenage dilemma or angst right up to those for adults, but as none of those are going to be read by the clientele who frequent an early childhood library, I thought today I would look at her lesser known picture books, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo and The Pain and the Great One. Both are family stories that deal with normal family and sibling concerns. They are particularly good at 'point of view' and I often use them when teaching this.
The Pain and the Great One tells about family events from the older sister's (the Great One's) point of view and then again from the younger brother's (the Pain's). It is like two books in one both told in the first person, but where the narrator is not the same in both bits.
As well there is a short chapter book about these two, The Pain and the Great One: Soupy Saturdays which continues this telling of family events with changing narrators. And although I don't have any others I have found from looking at Judy's website www.judyblume.com/ that there are other titles about Abigail and Jake. Now I need to search for them!
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