Name: Sarah Sammis's review of Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
Item: Harriet the Spy
Rating: 2
Author: Sarah Sammis

Louise Fitzhugh

Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. She's staked out a spy route, and she writes down everything about everyone she sees - including her classmates and her best friends - in her notebook. 
I bet the lady with the cross-eye looks in the mirror and feels just terrible.

Pinky Whitehead will never change. Does his mother hate him? If I had him I'd hate him.

Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before Harriet can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together?

--back cover

Harriet the Spy

Megan Gardner

Sarah Sammis

Since naming my youngest Harriet, I've had a number of people ask me or just outright assume that I named her for the title character from Louise Fitzhugh's novel Harriet the Spy (1964). She isn't named for the book but she did prompt me to read the book.

Many of the books reviews I've read for Harriet the Spy credit it for being ground breaking its brutally honest portrayal of childhood. Maybe it's the first (or among the first) to depict children in then contemporary society. The book though was noteworthy enough to win the Sequoyah Book Award.

I wish I could say I liked the book, but frankly, I didn't. Harriet is an unlikable and unreliable protagonist. She is left in the care of everyone except her ever absent parents who only actively take part in her life when everyone else has given up. She is first in the care of a governess, Catherine, though always called by Harriet's nickname, Ole Golly. She is later left in the hands of the less than sympathetic cook. Her parents are only ever there to be off to parties or to be overheard arguing.

Harriet meanwhile is given free reign to spy on her friends and neighbors. She's filled up 14 note books since her 8th birthday (she's 11 in the book). When she's finally caught spying her compulsive need to write in her note books becomes rather scary to read. Before her parents even try to talk to her, she's sent to therapy.

Harriet's tragic year seems to be more a scathing look at the wealthy rather than childhood in general. Maybe that's what makes Harriet so unusual. Most YA books seem to children from blue collar families.

Andrew John Kinney

I read this when I was about ten. As I remember, I enjoyed it; I was reminded of the series by an NYT article about Louise Fitzhugh.

Mayra Melo

This made me feel like a child again. Had good memories, and awful ones too. Since my life at 12 was quite similar to Harriet's at 11. Only more like hell. Due to a couple mean, devilish little girls.
Anyway, Fitzhugh is incredible because she actually understands kids in a whole new way. The way Harriet thinks and writes actually got me reminiscing quite a lot. It was a great experience.
And I do think I'm gonna give tomato sandwiches a try! :)

Harriet the Spy has a secret notebook which she fills with utterly honest jottings about her parents, her classmates, and her neighbors. Every day on her spy route, she "observes" and notes down anything of interest to her: 

I bet that lady with the cross-eye looks in the mirror and lust feels terrible.

Pinky Whitehead will never change. Does his mother hate him? If I had him I'd hate him. 

If Marion Hawthorne doesn't watch out she's going to grow up into a lady Hitler.

But when Harriet's notebook is found by her schoolmates, their anger and retaliation and Harriet's unexpected responses explode in a hilarious way.

--back cover

 Bruna Acioly Leão

*If you love this book, or if you don't want to be spoiled when reading it, you might not want to read this review.*

I am going to have to be the black sheep here and confess that I did not actually like this book.
I did not hate reading it, because I can't say that the writing is not well crafted and it flows and it is easy to read and become engrossed with the story. That is what kept me from giving it a lower rating than 2.5, maybe even 3 stars.

However, while the writing itself was very accomplished, I couldn't help but feel that it was leading me towards watching a train wreck of a character and plot.

From the very first chapter I could tell that Harriet was mean and bratty, had no respect for anyone's lives or their privacies. She seemed to think it was her job to spy on her neighborhood and write down everything that happened in their lives, coupled with her own horrible opinions. 

I mean, I get it. The author was trying to write a story about a lonely kid, who despite having a somewhat easy life was ignored by her parents and eventually was being bullied by her peers. Harriet is a sad kid, with shallow relationships, but that doesn't excuse her behavior. In fact, I think the psychiatrist her parents take her to missed the mark on not diagnosing her as having oppositional defiant disorder. I can't say narcissistic personality disorder yet because she is only eleven, and you can't diagnose kids under eighteen with any personality disorders, but she does demonstrate a sense of self-importance throughout the whole book which made me feel she would be a good candidate for it. She thinks she is entitled to everyone's lives, but they are of course not entitled to hers, so she gets upset when they find her notebook and naturally don't want to speak to her anymore. 

She does the things she does because she wants attention. 

She is not getting attention from her parents, she is not getting it from her friends at some point, and so she just keeps doing mean things until her parents finally notice and then reward her for her bad behavior (!) by pulling strings so the school will let her run the paper. Even her nurse, Ole Golly, the only adult figure who has given her any attention and who for that Harriet looks up to, teaches her simply to lie, instead of trying to make amends for the things she did wrong.

In the end, Harriet just buries her mistakes under the rug with a superficial and untruthful apology to her friends and they go along like the lesson had been learnt. It hadn't.

Instead, she could have admitted that she made a mistake, not calling the things she wrote lies, but sincerely repenting them and realizing that writing mean things about people and gossiping in a notebook is not an okay thing to do. Even if the notebook is meant to be kept secret. The more she writes these things the more she thinks them and the more she acts on them. It's not healthy. It's certainly not okay that she published the neighbors lives with the real names on the school paper (!)

Honestly, I could go on. I am not going to be a hypocrite and say this book should not read to children, but I think that a serious discussion about it is warrant. I did not root for Harriet throughout most of this book. She and I and the people who coddle her just don't share the same values, I think.
I think it is better to say things to people to their faces, if you really feel that you must say anything (most of the time, what is the point, what does it add to your life) than to go behind their backs and write mean things about them. (I suppose me writing this review is writing mean things about Harriet, but she is fictional, and I am just discussing her character academically, so...)

You could argue that Harriet is a child and she will grow and she will learn. I disagree. Just because she is a child doesn't mean she should be excused for being a brat.

I respect people who love this book and who have considered them their childhood favorites. I admit that the writing is compelling, the plot is somewhat interesting and it feels adventurous to imagine yourself being a spy. But I don't think even child me would have different opinions on this book.

Megan Gardner &
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Reviews

Join the club

Megan Gardner &Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Reviews

Join the club

Megan Gardner &
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh