Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Anachronisms and Meta-Moments in the Fudge Series

I recently wrote here about anachronisms in the Fudge series and as I continued reading the series to my daughter we found more.  In the last book, Double Fudge, Peter is 12, only about 3 years older than he was in the first book, set in the late 1970s/very early 1980s.  Yet inexplicably, his dad has a cellphone in this one and Harry Potter is mentioned.  I know the last book was written way after the first, but still.... it drives me nuts!

One of my very first posts was about books that mention other books and I'm always on the lookout for more.  The Fudge series has two that I noticed.  One is, as noted above, the references to Harry Potter in the last book.  The other comes in the penultimate book in the series, Fudge-a-Mania when  Fudge makes a new friend named Mitzi and she insists that the book Tell Me a Mitzi (originally published in 1970) is about her!  I'm really curious about why this was included.  Is it just one of Judy Blume's favorite books?  Or does she know the author?

2 comments:

  1. I used to love Judy Blume's books when I was younger, but I haven't read them in years.

    Judy Blume may just answer your question herself... I left a message for Judy one her website last year and she was kind enough to email me back. She's on Twitter too.

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  2. Late comment to say three things:

    I was just writing up an LJ post about the "Tell Me a Mitzi" issue when I stumbled across this post -- you are not the only one who's curious about it!

    I am not TOO bothered about the series always being set "now" and picking up technology and cultural references along the way. The Ramona books did, as does Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series. One example of a series that does not is Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries. They remain firmly and defiantly set in the 1980s and the storylines are still quite good, so I guess it just depends how the author chooses to do it.

    One example of "books that mention other books" comes in Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's The Grooming of Alice, in which Alice reads "a novel called Ice" -- also written by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Sneaky!

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