Judy Blume

Freckle Juice

Sonia O. Lisker

Sarah Sammis

Freckle Juice by Judy Blume has been around since I was a kid. I could have read it when I was in school but I didn't. When it comes to reading I was (and to a degree still am) an ornery and sometimes obstinate reader. As a child I was told repeatedly by teachers and other well meaning adults (except immediate family members) that I had to read Judy Blume. Guess what I did; I didn't read her. No sir. My free reading time was my time and I wasn't going to take assigned reading.

Thirty years later I have a son who had Freckle Juice assigned to him for reading group at school. He loved the book and insisted I had to read it. I have an open reading policy with him which includes my vow to try any book he recommends to me. When he recommended Freckle Juice I made it the next library book I had to read.

Freckle Juice ends up being one of Judy Blume's shortest books, coming in at only 48 pages. That's half the length of even the shortest of the Magic Tree House books. The plot is pretty basic too in the form of a problem, a solution, a failed result, a new problem, a new solution. It's classic plot progression A to B to –A to B' to A'.

Andrew hates having to wash his face every day before school. He feels it's making him late to class but his mother insists. He figures if he just had freckles like his friend at school he could get away with not washing face in the morning. Sharon, another classmate, says that for a price he can buy her family recipe for "Freckle Juice." All it ends up doing is giving him a stomachache and to save face he has to come up with some other way of having freckles.

It's a cute and obvious plot with not much in the way of twists or turns except perhaps for the teacher's solution near the end of the book. I can see though why my son liked the book.

Nicky has freckles—they cover his face, his ears, and the whole back of his neck. Sitting behind him in class, Andrew once counted eighty-six of them, and that was just a start! If Andrew had freckles like Nicky, his mother would never know if his neck was dirty.

One day after school, Andrew works up enough courage to ask Nicky where he got his freckles. When know-it-all Sharon overhears, she offers Andrew her secret freckle juice recipe—for fifty cents. That's a lot of money, but Andrew is desperate. At home he carefully mixes the strange combination of ingredients. Then the unexpected happens...
--back cover

Freckle Juice

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