Harriet the Spy Review
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Harriet the Spy Overview
First published by HarperCollinsUS in 1964, this classic children's novel has sold over 4 million copies and was awarded the New York Times Outstanding Book Award. Sixth-grader Harriet attends school on the New York's Upper East Side along with her two best pals, Sport, the jock, and Janie, the mad scientist. After school every day, she takes her notebook and proceeds through her spy route. Climbing on milk crates and hoisting herself up dumbwaiters, Harriet observes the rich lady who never gets out of bed; the man with twenty-five cats and the Italian family who runs a grocery store. She writes brutally warts-and-all notes on them all. Harriet's downfall is that she also writes down her thoughts about people she actually knows. After a game in the park when her notebook is knocked out of her hands and read by her classmates, Harriet's deepest thoughts are revealed and she is quickly ostracised by all her classmates -- even the boy with the Purple Socks -- who form the Spycatcher's Club to punish her. After her parents find out what's happened, Harriet receives a final, crushing blow. She is no longer allowed to take notes -- her parents, her teacher and even the cook search her every day for a contraband notebook. Harriet's only consolation is the love and the wise advice of her nanny who manages to get her through this difficult period in her life. A classic in the US where it was first published and a major motion film from Paramount, Harriet the Spy is a beloved book throughout the world.
Harriet the Spy Specifications
Ages 8-12. Thirty-two years before it was made into a movie,
Harriet the Spy was a groundbreaking book: its unflinchingly honest portrayal of childhood problems and emotions changed children's literature forever. Happily, it has neither dated nor become obsolete and remains one of the best children's novels ever written. The fascinating story is about an intensely curious and intelligent girl, who literally spies on people and writes about them in her secret notebook, trying to make sense of life's absurdities. When her classmates find her notebook and read her painfully blunt comments about them, Harriet finds herself a lonely outcast. Fitzhugh's writing is astonishingly vivid, real and engaging, and Harriet, by no means a typical, loveable heroine, is one of literature's most unforgettable characters.
School Library Journal wrote, "a tour de force... bursts with life." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books called it "a very, very funny story." And
The Chicago Tribune raved, "brilliantly written... a superb portrait of an extraordinary child."
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