Judy Blume: ‘Parents Are Getting Even More Cuckoo'

Are you there parents? It's your old friend, Judy, and she has a message for you.

"Parents are getting cuckoo," said novelist Judy Blume, author of "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." and dozens of other books which says are starting to be received more and more seriously.

"Parents are getting even more cuckoo even than they were then," she told Seth Meyers on the "Late Show" Friday night.

Take, for example, "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing," a 1972 book in which (spoiler alert) a boy swallows his brother's turtle, killing the poor creature.

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Besides being a good lesson, that turn of events was pretty funny to kids and parents alike back in the '70s, Blume said. Not so much today.

"Now it's like, that was very sad what you did to that turtle, and my child is never going to get over this.' I'm like, Hello? It's funny!"

Still, some things have certainly improved since the days when Seth Meyers was a tot. Blume said she doesn't face as much censorship now as when her publishers "didn't know what to do with" novels written for kids – now marketed as the Young Adult genre – and audiences were more shocked about her books' exceptional openness toward issues like puberty.

"The '80s was very, very bad. That was the height of censorship," she said, though she noted it still goes on today for some authors.

But Blume's "Late Night" appearance wasn't all about back-in-the-day – the woman who famously helped kids learn about their changing bodies took questions from some guys on the "Late Night" crew in need of their own advice.

The author known for helping young girls cope with their changing bodies helps out some members of Seth’s crew.

Though the questions were pretty far from what a kid might ask, unless they'd developed early-onset arthritis, her advice sounded almost exactly the same: "You should never be ashamed of your body!"

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