If someone published “Forever ...” now, I would be like, this is great, and I haven’t seen a lot of books like this, and it’s almost 40 years old. It felt extremely emotionally honest about sex. There weren’t a lot of other voices in the culture that said it was O.K. to be sexual and that it was also O.K. to be really emotional. Particularly with young men, we’re told we’re allowed to be these sex maniacs but we’re not told we’re allowed to be emotional.

JENNIFER WEINER, author of “In Her Shoes” and “Good in Bed”

I remember reading “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t” and thinking: “Oh my God, I’m so glad I’m not a boy. I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with embarrassing erections and wet dreams.” We all took sex ed, we all sat through the slide shows, but that was the first intimate sense I got of what it’s like to have a boy’s body.

Now there’s all this outcry about young-adult fiction — Is it too raw and is it too real, talking about eating disorders or cutting or rape? Judy Blume was doing this 35 years ago. She wrote about a girl who was having sex and getting pleasure from having sex and not getting punished for having sex.

CURTIS SITTENFELD, author of “Prep” and “Sisterland”

I bought “Forever ... ” at a school fair when I was probably 10. There was a used-book sale, and I picked it up and remember being in this big crowded gym and being like, “Uh, does anyone have any idea what this book contains?” I had stumbled upon this incredible raciness in this wholesome setting. I thought, like, holy smoke! It was very enthralling and very informative. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I don’t remember the boyfriend’s name, but I remember the name of his penis. Do you remember its name? Isn’t his penis named Ralph?

MEGAN ABBOTT, author of “The Fever” and “Dare Me”

My distinct childhood memory is reading “Wifey,” her adult book, at a slumber party when I was in fifth grade. We didn’t understand the story at all or the fact that all of us had mothers who were a lot like the main character, a frustrated housewife. What we got was, “How can you have sex standing up?” I saw it on my mom’s bookshelf a few months later and said something about how it was a dirty book, and she said: “No it’s not. It’s not a dirty book at all.” And it felt like this huge revelation and relief somehow, because of course I had loved it and I had felt like I had done something wrong.

LENA DUNHAM, creator of HBO’s “Girls” and author of “Not That Kind of Girl”

With the kerfuffle that happened around my book, I realized how uncomfortable young kids having curiosity about each other’s bodies and trying to understand their own physicality and sexuality makes people. And Judy is one of the only authors who, at the time she started writing, acknowledged that kids have a fully formed consciousness and questions that aren’t innocent and a sense of what’s happening in the adult world around them. She had the bravery to write about growing up in a way that wasn’t vanilla and that acknowledged just how complicated being a little girl is.