What I learned: If you are going to have sex, use birth control. Your first love, no matter how passionate, probably isn't your true love.
I remember this one with fondness because there were about three copies going around when I was in 7th grade. We read it, passed in on to the next girl, who in turn passed it on. Every 12-13 year old girl in my class read it sometime that year and it was something we all had in common. I suppose, now that I think about it, the reason we shared the books is that many of us, growing up the conservative Bible-Belt South of my childhood, were afraid to ask our parents to buy us a book in which a teenager had s-e-x. We were all desperately curious about it and wanted to learn something, anything, about why you might want to have sex, what it would be like, could you 'do it' and still be a good person? Thank you Judy Blume, for this book.