E.B. White Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

On April 3, 2017, Judy Blume received the E.B. White Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor named for the celebrated author of Charlotte's Web and given for distinguished and lasting contribution to children's literature.

This award came in the same year Blume was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters itself, one of the highest honors an American writer, artist, or composer can receive, recognizing sustained excellence and contribution to American arts and letters.

By 2017, nearly fifty years after her first book was published in 1969, Blume's influence on children's and young adult literature was firmly established as foundational. Authors across genres cited her as an inspiration for demonstrating that children's literature could and should address real emotional and physical experiences of growing up without condescension or moralizing.

The E.B. White Award specifically honored the breadth of Blume's contribution—not a single book, but an entire body of work spanning picture books like The Pain and the Great One, middle-grade fiction like the Fudge series, and groundbreaking young adult novels. The recognition from such a prestigious literary institution as the American Academy of Arts and Letters affirmed that Blume's decades of sometimes-controversial writing had earned a permanent, respected place in the canon of American literature.