Considering she’d already asked this morning if she could watch an episode of “Girls” on the DVR (i didn’t realize I could move that quickly before 7 a.m.) I was ready to say no. Then I looked.

“Yes,” I said carefully, looking at the book in her hand, Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. “That’s a book for kids.”

I read that book when I was in the fourth grade. Annabelle read it one summer — I don’t recall if it was the summer before or after fourth grade, or which epic camping trip we were on (Yellowstone, maybe?) but I will never forget the sound of the tent unzipping and the image of my daughter emerging, finished book in hand, eyes shining.

There’s something about Margaret that changes you forever. It’s not like you emerge fully prepared for adulthood, but it’s definitely a start.

“What’s it about?” Sophie asked.

Well, I told her, it’s about a girl who is going through changes — she moves to a new town, makes friends. My mind raced. What else do I say? To be honest, Sophie’s way more interested in puberty than Annabelle was at her age. A couple times a week she’ll take off her shirt and push her chest out to show me “they’re growing.”

They’re not, thank goodness, though she’d like them to be. She has several bras — but no real understanding of what it means to get breasts, or any of the rest of it. (Like any of us did, but you get my point here.)

As I write this, the book is forgotten; Sophie’s hiding somewhere with my iPhone, so I apologize if you get an early morning text from her. Funny, she can show me how to do things on my phone I could never figure out on my own. I guess it will be the same in reverse with puberty. I just didn’t think it would happen quite yet.

And to be honest, it will likely still be a while. Sophie’s really into chapter books, but best I can tell, when she’s on her own with one she never gets past Chapter One. When it’s time, maybe we’ll read Are You There, God? together.

Really slowly.

I don’t have a lot of romantic notions about camping — except when it comes to Annabelle.

I’d like to think that she’ll look back on our trip last week as part of the Summer She Turned 9 — the summer she danced with her Gaga, performed in a play version of “Diary of A Wimpy Kid” and went to the beach with her cousins for the umpteenth time. The summer she went to Yellowstone.

I imagine her collection of memories: Searching (in vain) out the window of her daddy’s giant truck for grizzly bears, then watching as buffalo practically brushed up against the windows during a late afternoon traffic jam.  The stink and gurgle of those weird “thermal features.” Learning to stoke the campfire and put up the tent. Doubling over in giggles with her mom when her little sister Sophie asked a forest ranger for “extra towels” and pretending to be Olivia the Pig in order to coax that darn Sophie to do everything from get out of the truck to pick up her feet and hike. Freezing in the tent at night, listening to the wind come up and the air come out of her poor dad’s mattress — and to her mom snoring. Looking at the stars, watching movies on the iPhone, making up family versions of the Double Rainbow Song.

And Margaret. I bet she’ll remember Margaret. For all her smarts, up to now Annabelle’s not been a huge reader — not in a can’t-put-that-book-down way. Not until Margaret. I read Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” when I was in fourth grade (or maybe third) but it didn’t occur to me that Annabelle was ready for it until a dear friend warned me her own daughter had just finished it and might start chatting with Annabelle about periods and boys.

I packed a copy of the book in Annabelle’s little pink backpack, along with her Nintendo DS and “Spesh” and “Ella,” her security blanket and stuffed elephant. She devoured it. At one point I had to warn her to slow down, that she’d run out of reading material while we were camping (one of my own personal fears). But as it was, her timing was perfect: Annabelle finished Margaret on the last morning we camped — sunk into a folding camp chair, orange Croc-ed ankles crossed daintily, dangling inches from the ground.

(Ah, the drama of the last pages of a good book. My own favorite memory is from fifth or sixth grade, when my pal Glenna Clark played the theme to the movie “Ice Castles” on her family’s piano for extra tear-jerking effect as I read the final paragraphs of Danielle Steele’s “The Promise”.)

Annabelle turned the last page and heaved one of those great big satisfied sighs you sigh when you’ve finished the greatest book you’ve ever read, and I immediately thought about which Judy Blume to give her next: “Otherwise Known as Shelia the Great” is probably too young. I’m not ready myself for “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t.” Perhaps “Deenie”? It’s a delicious debate. But I’m glad I didn’t have any other books with me; it was nice for Annabelle to spend some time reflecting with Margaret.

“Margaret talks to God,” Annabelle told me one morning as we walked the now well-worn path from our campsite to the (thankfully very clean with flush toilets) bathroom. I know, I answered, waiting, worried — this whole god thing is still a sore spot for me, particularly as the Jewish High Holidays approach this year and I have no better answers as to how proceed with a religious education than I did last year. (We’re still attending the Church of Dance….)

“And now,” she continued, “when I’m worried about something, like where I’m going to school next year or stuff going on with friends, I have someone to talk to. I can talk to Margaret.”

Frankly, I can’t think of a better confidant.

So far, it hasn’t been a big deal. I giggled like crazy years ago when Annabelle was in kindergarten and Ms. X announced she’d taught the kids the difference between “vulva” and “vagina”, but other than that, not much has been said about the whole thing. It’s pretty mild stuff, early on.

I knew third grade would be different. It was in either third or fourth grade that I discovered the book “What’s Happening to Me” strategically placed where I’d find it at home. I read “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume. And most memorable was the visit the school nurse made to the classroom.

The visit was accompanied by the viewing of an 8 mm film about menstruation. I don’t recall details, but I will never forget that the nurse — whom I remember as being around 110 years old, though I suppose she might have been as young as 50 and prematurely gray — felt the need to explain to us in great detail that when she was a girl, they had to use rags.

Really, what was the point of telling us that?

Anyhow, when I signed the Human Growth and Development permission slips a few weeks ago, I knew the lessons wouldn’t be tacky. The school has this stuff down. In fact, I forgot the week was even coming up, til Annabelle and I were driving home from her piano lesson last Tuesday and I tried a shortcut that didn’t work.

“Mommy, do you ever get scared you’ll get lost in the car?” she asked from the backseat. (The car is where we do most of our deep communicating.)

“No, not really. I have my phone. I can call if I get lost. Why?”

“Well, Ms. D says she gets scared of that.”

Ms. D is one of the third grade teachers at the school. Annabelle explained she had her for Human Growth and Development, and that that day they’d been discussing fears. Annabelle was afraid of meeting new people in new situations.

Weird segue, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

By the end of Wednesday, my mom friends were giggling about how their daughters were talking about “the S-E-X” (no specifics, thankfully) but when I asked Annabelle, she said only that they’d discussed “kindness” in her class.

It wasn’t til Thursday that I caught on.

“How was Human Growth and Development today?” I asked Annabelle, as we cuddled on the couch before bed.

“It was good!” she said. “We took a Messy Room Pledge!”

I pulled back and looked her in the eye.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I asked, suddenly wise. “Did you ever turn in that permission slip I put in your Important Papers folder?”

“What permission slip?”

I hugged her, shaking with silent laughter.  Then asked her to name the other girls in Ms. D’s section of Human Growth and Development; yep, all the religious kids.

So, anyone interested in teaching my kids the facts of life? When we’re at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, I intend to search for “What’s Happening to Me?” My mom volunteered to talk to her, but I said no thanks, Annabelle doesn’t need to go through life referring to both male and female body parts as “wieners”.

Someday, I know, Sophie will be a much bigger challenge. I’m happy to put that one off as long as possible. Anyone seen “Pink Slip”?

I sort of meant it. I mean, that’s not the only reason, but yeah, it was a reason. I still enjoy a good pass through a BG; just made one the other day. (It helps to have a 7 year old who can wear 5T and a 5 year old whose first-day-of-school outfit was 2T.)

Another important reason to have kids: kid books.

I spent much of my high school career curled up on the couch with a good book — none of the books (except for The Great Gatsby) that were assigned to me, mind you. I tended toward the well-read (okay, memorized) books of my youth. Those, and Donna Parker. (An underappreciated Nancy Drew type, except she wrote for her school newspaper. Seriously. I know. Stop laughing. Check out “Donna Parker Goes to Hollywood” and you’ll understand. You can find it on eBay.)

Anyhow. A zillion years ago, it seems, when Sophie was about 2, I wrote a piece for New Times in which I mentioned that I wasn’t so sure Sophie would ever “get” the book A Wrinkle In Time. I have come to amend that previous statement — I think she might. And not only because the coolest DS parent I have met, a guy named Michael Berube who wrote a book called Life as We Know It, observed I shouldn’t give up hope on that front. (More on him in a later post, I promise. Or check out his web site: www.michaelberube.com)

More and more, Sophie’s “getting” it. And given other factors, I have a feeling she’ll be a big reader someday soon.

A lot of people — people far less dorky than I — say it, but I really mean it: Books were my friends, growing up. Every Judy Blume character (even the boy in Then Again, Maybe I Won’t with the ejaculation problem, even Ralph, for the truly Blume-obsessed), Ramona the Pest, Frances the hedgehog. (Then again, I was the kid who truly thought Mr. Rogers was my personal best friend, so why are you surprised?) I loved them all.

But my favorite was Harriet, Louise Fitzhugh’s girl about NYC, the misfit who took a lot of notes and got herself in trouble that way. (I’ve always favored books set in the city; two other favorites: The Cricket in Times Square and The Genie of Sutton Place. I could read them right now!)

Along with books, I love movies. (Again, painfully obvious and trite. Sorry, that’s me.) But one thing I’m always wary of is movies made out of books. It took me forever to see “The Accidental Tourist” and I still haven’t let myself watch all of “The World According to Garp”. Why slash the reels in my head?

That’s how I felt about Harriet, when the Rosie O’Donnell movie came out. I did see it, and okay, it was fine, but the day this summer when Annabelle came bounding out of summer camp, announcing she’d just seen Harriet the Spy and asking if I knew where her daddy’s binoculars were, I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach. Or at least boxed my ears. (I got that one from Little Princess; loved the book, never saw the movie.)

She was barely 7. I hadn’t thought to present her with the book yet.

As soon as I could, I got myself to Changing Hands, the indie bookstore in Tempe and really, the only place to shop in this town, and bought up all the used copies of Harriet the Spy. I wound up with several versions, and realized the one I had as a child — I saved that version for Annabelle, although the print is impossibly tiny — was the 20th anniversary edition. That’s one old book.

I love the illustrations. When I think of Harriet, Ole Golly and Janie, those are the images that pop up, not the mealymouthed actors who merely played them in the movie. I tried pointing out the illos to Annabelle, but she was disappointed that they didn’t look like the movie characters.

SEE??? I cried silently to the book gods. Look what they’ve done!

But after a few false starts, Annabelle’s deep into Harriet. Deep into the beginning, anyway. At curriculum night last week, her second grade teacher made a shocking announcement. The kids still have to read every night, just like in first grade, but they can read silently to themselves. I folded laundry tonight while Annabelle read, and truth be told, I sulked a little.

Still, it was so cool. When she was 15 minutes past her bedtime, I made an announcement; her hand shot up in protest. “Just let me finish this page!” she begged.

I obliged, of course. And now that she’s asleep and I’m done blogging, I might just snatch her copy (or grab one from my stash) and settle in for a good read.