Product Description

Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she 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?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3946 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-08
• Released on: 2001-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780440416791
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
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."

From School Library Journal
Grade 3-5-Harriet is determined to become a famous author. In the meantime, she practices by following a regular spy route each day and writing down everything she sees in her secret notebook. Her life is turned upside down when her classmates find her notebook and read it aloud!. By Louise Fitzhugh.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Harriet is determined to be a famous author when she grows up: central to her plans is the keeping of a notebook of candid observations of those around her. She stakes out a spy route and carefully records her findings, only to find her world changed when classmates find and read her notebook. Disaster threatens. -- Midwest Book Review

Customer Reviews

There's a girl who leads a life of danger
I have a theory about "Harriet the Spy". I suspect that no adult that read this book once (and only once) as a child remembers it correctly. For example, if you had asked me, prior to rereading it, what the plot of "Harriet the Spy" was, I could have summed it up like so: Harriet the Spy is about a girl who wants to be a spy. She spies on lots of different people and writes in a notebook, but one day all her friends read the notebook and none of them like her anymore. That is the plot of "Harriet the Spy". And I would be half right. Surprising to me, I found I was forgetting much much more.

In truth, "Harriet the Spy" is about class, loss, and being true to one's own self. Harriet M. Welch (the M. was her own invention) is the daughter of rather well-to-do socialites. Raised by her nurse Ole Golly until the ripe old age of eleven, Harriet must come to terms with Ole Golly's eventual abandonment. Ole Golly marries and leaves Harriet to her own devices just as the aforementioned tragedy involving her friends and the notebook occurs. The combination of the nurse's disappearance from Harriet's life (leaving behind such oh-so helpful pieces of advice as, "Don't cry", and the like) and the subsequent hatred directed at Harriet by her former friends makes Harriet into a veritable she-devil. A willful child from the start (punishments are few and far between in the Welch family) Harriet slowly spirals downward until a helpful note from Ole Golly gives her the advice she needs to carry on.

So many things about this book appeal to kids. The realistic nature of peer interactions is one. Harriet randomly despises various kids, even before her notebook is read. After making their lives terrible, she eventually has to experience what they themselves have had to deal with. Author Louise Fitzhugh is such a good writer, though, that even as you disapprove of Harriet's more nasty tendencies you sympathize with her. Honestly, who would want ink dumped down their back? As Harriet observes various people on her spy route, she writes her observations about them as well as about life itself. She hasn't quite figured out the differences between her life and the life of her best friend Sport (the son of an impoverished irresponsible writer) though she does briefly ponder if she herself is rich (the fact that she has her own private bath, nurse, and family cook never quite occurs to her). On the whole, the book contains a multitude of wonderful characters. Harriet's parents are both amusing and annoying, completely dedicated to their daughter and completely clueless about her needs. I was especially shocked by a section of the book in which Harriet asks her mother if she'll be allowed to eat dinner with her parents that night. Gaah!

Accompanying the text are Fitzhugh's own meticulous line drawings. They're fantastic and eerie. Combined with this timeless story (timeless in all the good ways) the book deserves its status as one of the best books for children. Read it again to remember. You'll find a whole lot more than you bargained for.

Are you comfortable with books that make you think?
When I was 9 I was finally moved up to the advanced reading group in my class. In order to catch up, I had to read Harriet the Spy in its entirety over Thanksgiving break. I was extremely dismayed, I had never even seen a book so big, much less read one! But, I devoured it in two days. I didn't live in New York and I had never kept a journal, but everything that happened in the book was completely familiar. It was, I think, the first work of literature I had ever read on my own.

Skip ahead 14 years. I reread this book in my local library on a lazy Saturday afternoon. I loved it, but I can understand the qualms expressed by some parents about the book The question is: What is the point of having children read - is it to present them with 2-dimensional models of correct behavior, or else to provoke their thinking, reasoning, and analytical skills? I think it's very telling that a reviewer who gave this book one star literally threw it into the fireplace - this is the type of book that people who hate books burn.

People criticize Harriet for being rude or mean, but I think they are a little off base there. Harriet is a smart 11 year old, but she is an 11 year old just the same. Assigning adult motives and value judgments to her behavior is flat-out unfair. She's just a kid, and this is how kids behave, not when you're around, but on the playground and in the classroom where they are discovering peer interaction.

In fact, this is a very moral story. Harriet learns that there are reasons for lying - it isn't being hypocritical (as adults often do seem to children) but rather to spare other peoples' feelings - sometimes it's better to be kind than to be truthful. Watch the way Harret interacts with her friend Sport: she learns for the first time to show consideration for other peoples' feelings - not because you will get punished, but because they will get hurt, and you do not want to hurt the people you care about, even though so often you inadvertently do. This is a complicated message that the target audience (kids 9-12) are learning IN REAL LIFE which is why the book resonates with so many readers of that age (and beyond).

Harriet and the Night-Time Sky
When I was ten years old, my teacher was Mrs Stanley.

Mrs Stanley (like all great teachers) refused to teach us what she was told to teach us. Instead she taught us what she felt we ought to know. One of the things she felt we ought to know was "Harriet the Spy."

Harriet the Spy is Harriet M. Welsh, a little girl who keeps a notebook in which she writes thoughts and observations about her friends and the people around her. She also has a spy route made up of six or seven houses she passes on the way to and from school each day. She writes about the houses on her spy route in the notebook each day also.

As a kid, you can understand the desire to peer in windows and you can share Harriet's frustration with grown-ups, what they say, what they don't say, all that. As a kid, you share the sense of isolation visited upon Harriet when her notebook falls out of her bag and is read by all the people in her class. You also share the good times and the laughs, of which there are many, with her. When you are a kid, you read "Harriet the Spy" and it's the story of a little girl whose world falls apart for a little while and then appears to be on the mend.

Years later, I read the book again (sort of glimpsed through half-closed eyes, thinking: this will not be as good as I remembered). You know what? It is every bit as good reading the book as a (so-called) adult as it was reading the book as a kid. Since then I get through "Harriet the Spy" at least once a year. It has become a kind of tradition with me. My little girl is even named after her.

"Harriet the Spy" is a golden classic. There are not many books like this. The five star rule goes out of the window. Other books you can measure with stars. Harriet the Spy is like the night-time sky. There are too many stars to count.