"Superfudge" is a 1980 young adult novel by Judy Blume, and is part of a series of four books detailing the life of Peter Hatcher, his younger brother "Fudge", and the rest of his family. It was the sequel to "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing". This series of books, unlike much of Blume's work (for example, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. and Then Again, Maybe I Won't) doesn't deal with controversial or traumatic topics, but is geared towards readers a little younger, with most of Peter's experiences being slightly more comedic.
The story starts with Peter learning that his parents are expecting another baby. He then learns that his parents are planning on moving from Manhattan to Princeton, New Jersey. He will miss his new home, and is a little bit afraid of how to make new friends in a new school. His brother gets a pet Mynah Bird, and causes problems at school by being precocious and bratty. His little sister spits up food. His dad wants to take a sabbatical and his mother wants to study art history. He misses his friends back in New York. It is a series of events, some comedic, some a little more serious, that might realistically happen to a 12 year old boy from an upper middle class family. Some of the events are dated, and some of the events are a bit outside my experience (his father is an advertising executive on Madison Avenue).
Also, significantly, his parents never fight or have serious money trouble (and at one point discuss buying a $2000 painting...in 1980 dollars). He hasn't yet had a real crush or any romantic feelings.
When reading this book, I was waiting for the central plot to develop, but one never really does. Each chapter is a separate story. Peter isn't stupid, and he has insight into his life at times. There are a few issues that are real issues, like sibling rivalry, fear of losing friends, feeling that his parents aren't taking his needs into account---but none of those problems becomes a defining crisis for him.
In many ways, I feel this is very realistic and mirrored my own development as a preteen. I was smart and aware when I was in those years, from 10 to 12. But I also remember life being very episodic, and that I didn't yet develop a central narrative about what was happening to me. Basically, things happened to me, but they didn't form a single story about who I was as a person or what I wanted. And that is where the protagonist is in this book--- events happen, and he has a psychological reaction to them, but they don't form a single story about his self. I also wonder how much of this is related to gender: from what I have gathered, girls usually started thinking about their selves at a younger age, and with greater intensity than boys. Which also made the shift for me, as a boy greater: one year I am reading books about airplanes and looking for cool bugs, and less than a year later I am aware of what it is to have a self, and to navigate it through the sometimes frustrating process of trying to be who I think I should be. Meanwhile, girls of the same age have had several years of practice at pondering self-presentation and thinking about who they are socially.
All of which might seem like a tangent, but is actually important in understanding why this book works, despite it having less of a plot than other Judy Blume novel. This book is a realistic portrait of what it is like to be at an age where you are intellectually able to understand the wider world, but haven't quite entered the fraught period of self-definition that is adolescence. So even though I am not part of the target audience, I still see what Judy Blume was doing with this book.