A Quote by Willa Holland

Adapting a Judy Blume book is something I really wanted to do, and you couldn't grow up in the '90s without knowing about 'Tiger Eyes' and reading it. It should've been assigned to all teenage girls.
Hey, don't knock Judy Blume. Without her, my younger self would never have been able to decode the random acts of madness perpetrated by the fascinating creature known as the teenage girl.
My parents are pretty liberal. But they were just you know trying to look out for my innocence or whatever. But my babysitter had "Forever" [by Judy Blume]. And I said "Well I've read Judy Blume books, can I borrow that?" And she said no, this one's not appropriate for you. Which obviously, got me really worked up. So I took it.
An avid reader, I never missed a book by Judy Blume or Agatha Christie. They both remain two of my favorite authors. If I could have combined these ladies into one person, that's who I would have wanted to be when I grew up.
Judy Blume especially sort of broke the boundaries of what is appropriate and what should be written about - what teenagers are actually doing.
I was kind of reading you know Judy Blume and stuff like that. But yeah, but I've since educated myself.
I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!
I wasn't seeing black girls in the books I was assigned to read at my school. I was tired of only reading about white boys and dogs and wanted to collect books featuring black girls.
Judy Blume excels at describing how it feels to be invisible. So how poetic is it that Blume herself is suddenly everywhere?
It's one of those things where the book has all these stars that burn really bright that you hang onto and they're all saying, 'This is The Girl on the Train experience.' All those stars or hooks needed to be in the film, but sometimes they needed to be a bit different. It's important when adapting such a popular book to hit all those points but also break out expectations without slaughtering the book. And that was, for me, the joy of adapting the book.
Sometimes I'll say, "I wrote that book," and the person will look at you as if you're really strange. One time that happened to my daughter on a plane. She was sitting next to a girl who was reading one of my books and my daughter said, "My mother wrote that book." And the girl started to quiz my daughter, asking her all sorts of questions, like what are the names of Judy's children and where did she grow up. My daughter thought it was so funny.
As a kid, during the school year, my head was often buried in a textbook or Judy Blume book; the words and pictures were the perfect, barrier-free environment for me.
When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls.
I had a lot of different reasons for writing the book, but at its core was the desire to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from. That was my experience as a child. 'Children of Blood and Bone' is a chance to address that. To say you are seen.
I like girls that are down to earth, intelligent, and don't try to be anything that they're not. One thing that I fall for all the time is girls with blue eyes and brown hair. There's something about that combination that I find really sexy. It's all in the eyes...and the personality, but that's obvious.
You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it. You can put it down on a table, open to the page you're reading, and when you pick it up a few days later it will still be exactly as you left it. You never have to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die.
I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if adults cannot enjoy a children’s book properly there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. This of course, is just a smart way of saying I don't want to grow up.
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