Blubber

Linda gets bullied at school and everyone, including the narrator, makes fun of her. Then the narrator gets bullied and suddenly, it’s not funny any more.

Blubber was first published by Judy Blume in 1974 and was banned from many school libraries and reading lists because of violence and language.

Tropes used in Blubber include:

• Actual Pacifist: Linda tries to solve the problem by dialogue. It fails.
• Addiction Displacement: When Jill's mom quits smoking cigarettes, she takes up chewing bubble gum instead. Jill is impressed at the size of the bubbles her mom can blow.
• Adults Are Useless: The teachers scold the kids occasionally for their antics, but never make a move to stop it. Even when Linda does what a bullied person should and tells an adult about it, Mrs. Minish and the principal never bother to investigate the bullying and simply accept Wendy's crazy lies as gospel - either that or they blame the victim (such as telling Linda to "be more careful" after she falls as a result of Wendy tripping her). Jill's mother comforts her when the class turns on her, but doesn't step in to actually help her.
• All Girls Like Ponies: Donna is obsessed with horses, so much that she wants to marry one when she grows up.
• Alpha Bitch: Wendy.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Kenny Brenner
• Chinese Best Friend: Tracy Wu
• Berserk Button: Never call Jill's best friend Tracy a racial slur. Ever.
• The Bully: Wendy
• Calling Me a Logarithm: Jill and her classmates use words like "bestial" and "carnivore" to insult Linda, even though they don't know themselves what those words actually mean.
• Cool Old Lady: Mrs. Sandmeier may be in her 50s, but according to Jill, she can single-handedly beat Kenny and his friends at basketball. She's also trilingual (coming from Switzerland) and a Supreme Chef (it's mentioned she makes chicken soup from scratch).
  • Great Maudie (Jill's great-aunt) is a partial subversion. Jill likes her at first because she's gregarious and loves to laugh, but changes her mind when Maudie tries to force her new-age hippie lifestyle (including cold showers and disgusting health food) on her and Kenny.
• Creepy Child: Wendy and her followers are a borderline example. They write lists of new ways to torment Linda, including forcibly undressing her on two separate occasions (on one of these occasions, only Linda's tearful pleas for mercy stop the Girl Posse from stripping her totally naked). They even force Linda to say things like, "I am Blubber, the Smelly Whale of Class 206," until she starts saying it automatically before using the toilet, getting a drink of water, or getting on the school bus, without being prompted. Later, Wendy and her gang attack Jill at the bus stop and throw her books on the ground. They're about to try to forcibly undress Jill as well until Jill decides to fight back.
• The Dog Bites Back: Linda, very briefly, gets to be part of Wendy's gang and pick on Jill. Then Wendy turns on her again and kicks her out.
• Girl Posse: Wendy and her "plus one" Caroline are the nucleus of this one, with Jill and Donna the secondary members. Once Jill replaces Linda as the class outcast, Linda takes Jill's place in the Girl Posse.
• Gratuitous French: Part of Mrs. Sandmeier's job is to teach Jill and Kenny to speak French. Jill understands when Mrs. Sandmeier engages her in French, but answers in English because she can't be bothered to think of the correct French words. However, when she writes Mrs. Sandmeier a letter, she signs it in French: Tu m'as beaucoup manqué (meaning "I've missed you so much").
• Hypocrite: Jill won't let anyone who uses a racial slur against Tracy get away with it, but thinks nothing of joining her classmates in calling Linda one name after another. It gets to the point where they even look up new words in the dictionary to use as names against her.
• Informed Deformity: Linda is apparently the fattest girl in the class, but on the cover art she doesn't look any heavier than the rest of the girls. Heck, the narrative even says she's not that fat compared to a boy in their class who's so big, he jiggles when he moves! (He also participates in the bullying, perhaps just grateful he isn't the one Wendy is singling out for torment.) What apparently seals Linda's fate in terms of becoming the class outcast is her doing a report on whales, which makes Wendy decide to nickname her Blubber.
• Karma Houdini: Wendy, again.
• Keep-Away: First Jill and the gang play this with Linda's notebook. Then later on, when Jill becomes the target, the gang plays catch with her math book.
• Kids Are Cruel: And how.
• Loners Are Freaks: Poor Linda…
• Moral Guardians have frequently targeted this book for a number of reasons. A big reason is that Wendy and her followers never face any meaningful punishment, and no one (save Kenny) makes an attempt to reach out to Linda and be her friend. Even Jill, after being in Linda's shoes for a short time, still concludes that Linda deserved the bullying she received because "she didn't stand up for herself." Not exactly a great message for would-be bullies or their victims.
• Morality Pet: Tracy seems to be this for Jill, as she's the only one Jill has a consistent good relationship with.
• Only Sane Girl: Tracy. She's in a different class, so she never participates in the bullying or even comes in much contact with Linda, and she's the one who warns Jill the perils of letting the bullying go too far. She also, unlike Jill, has parents who are there for her all the time. She's not an angel, but most of the trouble she does get in - specifically the rotten eggs in Mr. Machinist's mailbox - seems to be the result of Toxic Friend Influence from Jill.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Subverted!
• Shaggy Dog Story: Linda. She starts the book alone and bullied by the whole class, then ends the book alone and still friendless even if it's implied the others have backed off.
• Shout Out: Jill references the Christmas pageant in Harriet the Spy in which everyone performed foods at a holiday dinner, and wishes her school's holiday pageants could be as fun. Jill also has a few things in common with Harriet M. Welsch: she has emotionally distant parents but a nanny (Ole Golly -> Mrs. Sandmeier) she adores, and she becomes the target of a bullying campaign initiated by the class Alpha Bitch (Marion Hawthorne -> Wendy).
• Shut UP, Hannibal: Jill does eventually call Wendy on her bullshit, even if in the end it amounts to little. At most, Wendy's lackey Caroline ends up ditching her for a new friend.
• Threw My Bike on the Roof: When Jill becomes the target of bullying, one of her classmates throws her math book in the street.
  • Earlier, when Jill throws her shoe at another classmate during a horseplay incident at lunch, the boy retaliates by throwing the shoe out the window, and Jill is forced to wait until recess to look for it.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Jill's little brother Kenny thinks Linda is really cool when he gets to talk to her at a bar mitzvah. Perhaps emboldened by this (and because Wendy's not around), Linda actually trades quips and insults with Jill at dinner.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Wendy rules her classmates with an iron fist. Everyone else goes along with what she wants and strives to impress her, and, as Jill learns the hard way, woe betide anyone who dares cross her. Illustrated by how Linda is actually willing to stand up for herself and call Jill out for her behavior, but only when Wendy isn't around.
  • Jill may be this for Tracy as well.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Overlaps with Picky Eater. Jill loves peanut butter, so much that she brings a peanut butter sandwich to a bar mitzvah in case she doesn't like what's served (which she doesn't). The starting point for her friendship with Rochelle is that Rochelle also brings peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Some of the bullying of Linda involves forced underwear exposure. Later, Jill stops wearing skirts to prevent this happening to her.
• Villain Protagonist: Jill
• What Could have Been: Judy Blume originally planned to write Blubber in the third person, but her daughter convinced her to change it to first-person narration.