Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself (or: Are You There, Hitler? It's Me, Sally)

I love this book. Love, love, love this book. Love.

I first read Judy Blume's Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself when I was eight or nine. A school library find, no doubt, since I know I didn't own it. I probably re-read it at some point during my early teen years, but I'm certain it's been a good 20, 25 years since I've picked it up. I remembered liking it, but I really wasn't prepared for just how much I would enjoy reading this.

The story takes place in 1947, and is told entirely from the point-of-view of 10-year-old Sally J. Freedman, a Jewish girl who is highly imaginative, talkative, and lovable. When her brother Douglas contracts nephritis, the entire family (sans Dad, aka "Doey Bird" as he's been nicknamed by Sally)  must move from New Jersey to Miami Beach for the winter to aid in his recovery. There, Sally experiences a new way of life: new schools, new friends, and oh, yes...a next-door neighbor who Sally is convinced is Adolf Hitler.

The hook on which everything hangs is Sally's unique perspective. Starring... is not a plot-driven book, but rather a character study and even something of a social critique. For instance, Sally's confusion about her father's remark that he had to pay for their Florida apartment "under the table" ["Sally tried to picture her father under the table in Miami Beach. Probably the apartment landlord, Mr. Koner, was with him. Daddy would take out his money and hand it to Mr. Koner. He'd count it, nod, and then they'd both crawl out from under the table together."] humorously addresses the very real hardship of the post-WWII housing shortage.

This is the thrust of the entire book. Sally makes sense of things as best she can, but she is just like the rest of us -- some things simply don't make sense. How could anybody possibly explain to Sally why her Tante Rose and cousin Lila died at Dachau? Sally understands the specifics of the event -- we are startled when she casually suggests to a friend that they "play Concentration Camp."

          "You can be the concentration camp guard. You hand the pretend soap to Tante Rose and Lila and tell them to go to the showers."
           "Why do they get pretend soap?"
          "Because it's a trick. They're not really going to get showers, they're going to get killed in a big gas oven."
           "I'm going home," Betsy said. "I don't like this game."

 But Sally doesn't really comprehend the horror of the holocaust any more than we do. In her game-playing and especially in the vividly imaginative stories she is forever dreaming up (all of which star herself), we sense Sally's yearning both to understand why things happen as they do, and to control the world around her (more than one fantasy involves her either being or rescuing her late cousin Lila, whom she has never met yet still identifies strongly with).

When old Mr. Zavodsky, a neighbor in the apartment complex, offers her and her friend candy, Sally decides that he is actually Hitler in disguise. Sally's assumption is obviously and laughably wrong: even when she eavesdrops on Mr. Zavodsky's telephone conversation (oh, the lost joys of party lines!) with someone named Rita, who pleads with Mr. Zavodsky, "Papa, I wish you'd come to live with us...Murray wants you and so do the boys," it only convinces Sally that "Rita" is actually Eva Braun, and Murray and the boys are fellow Nazis. 

But I don't want to make it sound as if the entire book is about Hitler, Nazis, and the holocaust. This isn't remotely the case, though Sally's childish attempts to make sense of the senseless add gravitas. Actually, much of the book is a light-hearted stroll through the past, a world in which children name their pet kittens "Margaret O'Brien the Second," older brothers scheme about how to get to see Jane Russell in The Outlaw, and sitting on your father's lap so you can give him his "treatment" ("a sliding kiss, three quick hugs and...a butterfly kiss on his nose") is the most important thing in the world.