Hooray! Today was Library Day, which always makes me happy - I read far too obsessively for my monthly book budget, so our public library is my savior. I came home today with 11 new books (and Patrick got 4 that I'm already eyeing up!) so I'm already feeling much happier and more secure with the knowledge that I've got so much good reading ahead of me.

One of the books I picked up this time was Judy Blume's Fudge-a-Mania. I LOVED Judy Blume's books when I was a kid, especially Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing and Superfudge, and I've been re-reading the Fudge series lately and finding it just as funny as I'd remembered. Superfudge is still my absolute favorite, by far the funniest and (IMO) best - but the very first time I read it as a kid, I remember I was actually really disappointed.

It wasn't Judy Blume's fault. The thing is, even before we learned to read, my best friend and I already loved books. And we wanted to be able to read, so sometimes we "read" books out loud to each other. Best of all, we had very similar tastes. So one day, when I was over at her house, she pulled Superfudge off her older sister's shelf. "I'll read this one to you," she announced. "It's great!" And it was. In fact, it was awesome.

The heroines (two best friends) and their families were chased by vampires! They ended up in a tall room at the top of a building, with the vampires banging on the locked door! There was NOWHERE TO RUN! They were going to have to JUMP OUT THE WINDOW TO ESCAPE THE VAMPIRES. How would they survive?????

I hung on her words. What an incredible book!

A few years later, after we had both learned to read, my parents bought me my own copy of Superfudge. I couldn't wait to read it! But...where were the vampires? Where was the pulse-pounding action?

It took me a while to forgive the book for not being the story my best friend had told me. But I do love it now...even if I still kind of wish that that first version of the book existed somewhere in the world for me to re-read, too!