Author Wants Theater to Be a Good Experience for Children

Judy Blume, the popular writer of children’s novels, is pleased and anxious that her “Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing” is being staged locally.

She saw the first production in 1986 at the Seattle Children’s Theatre, and loved it. But when the Seattle producers first approached her, “it was very scary for me to let this one go,” she said from her New York home.

“I love the idea of children being exposed to theater,” she said. “But I also want it to be really good for them. Sometimes kids love a book and then they’re disappointed at what’s been done to it.”

In Seattle, “the little children were played by older children and the older children were played by young people in their 20s.” She’s “curious how it works with both children and adults” playing preschoolers, as they do here.

“How strange,” she said. “You have to do it one way or another, it seems to me.”

The script is a “faithful adaptation,” she said. “Of all the books, this is probably the best one to stage because it’s so much fun.”

Blume said adults shouldn’t find anything objectionable in the play’s comic openness about certain bodily functions.

“You can’t be too young for tinkling or throwing up,” she said. “Children know that. It’s especially important because it brings it right home to them: ‘Yes, I know about that,’ or ‘I have a little brother or sister who would do that.’

“Humor is so important to share with our kids. To me, that’s a really important part of family life. We laugh because we recognize ourselves.”

Fudge, the play’s star mischief-maker, was based on Blume’s filmmaker son “when he was a toddler.”