Harriet the Spy is a children's novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh that was published in 1964. It has been called "a milestone in children's literature" and a "classic".[3][4] In the U.S., it ranked number 12 in the 50 Best Books for Kids and number 17 in the Top 100 Children's Novels on two lists generated in 2012.[5][6]
Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. Encouraged by her nanny, "Ole Golly", Harriet observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career. Several standalone episodes highlight the various eccentric characters she meets on her afternoon "spy route".
Harriet's best friends are Simon "Sport" Rocque, a serious boy who wants to be a certified public accountant or a ball player, and Janie Gibbs, who wants to be a scientist. Harriet's enemies in her class are Marion Hawthorne, the teacher's pet and self-appointed queen bee, and Marion's best friend, Rachel Hennessy.
Harriet's life changes abruptly when Ole Golly's suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, proposes and she accepts. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny. Her mother and father are at a loss to understand Harriet's feelings and are of little comfort to her.
At school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at her brutally honest documentation of her opinions of them. The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch and passing nasty notes about her in class. In return, Harriet regularly spies on the Spy Catcher Club through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. After getting into trouble for carrying out some of her plans, Harriet unsuccessfully tries to resume her friendships with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened. When Harriet's grades go down, her parents confiscate her notebook, which only depresses her further.
Harriet's mother takes her daughter to see a child psychiatrist, who advises Harriet's parents to get in touch with Ole Golly and ask her to write to Harriet. In her letter, Ole Golly tells Harriet that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you are not going like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend."
Meanwhile, dissension is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion and Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same.
Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper, replacing Marion. The newspaper—featuring stories about the people on Harriet's spy route and the students' parents—becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to print a retraction of the things she had written in her journal. Harriet is forgiven by Sport and Janie.
Reception
The book appeared on a 1964 list of "The Year's Best Juveniles" in The New York Times Book Review.[7] One 1965 reviewer called the book "a brilliantly written, unsparing realistic story, a superb portrait of an extraordinary child".[8] Another reviewer found that it "captures the feelings, thoughts and situations of a modern city child with remarkable clarity and dimension".[9] Nevertheless, at least one reviewer in 1965 felt that the book dealt with "disagreeable people and situations".[10] Although it was not chosen as one of the American Library Association (ALA) Notable Books for Children for 1964, years later it was included in a retrospective 1960–1964 ALA Notable Books List.[3]
It won a Sequoyah Book Award in 1967.[11] The paperback version was selected as one of the "Best in the Field" published during the previous 16 months in a 1968 New York Times article.[12] In 1995, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies claimed that 2.5 million copies of the book had been sold;[13] however, the book did not appear on a 2001 Publishers Weekly list of "hardcovers that have sold 750,000 copies and paperbacks that have topped the one million copy mark."[14]
Whitney Matheson wrote on the USA Today site in 2002 that Harriet "attracts dedicated, lifelong supporters".[15]Anita Silvey in 2004 selected it as one of the 100 best books for children.[16] In 2005, the ex-CIA officer Lindsay Moran cited the Harriet the Spy series of books as an inspiration for her career.[17] It was included in a 2009 list of "Children’s Classics" by The Horn Book Magazine.[18]
In 2012, Harriet the Spy was ranked number 17 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal.[6] Earlier that year, Time Out New York Kids ranked it number 12 among the "50 Best Books for Kids".[5] Late in 2015, the same source ranked it number 34 in the "73 best kids' books of all time for families".[19]
Despite its popularity, the book has been banned from some schools and libraries "because it was said to set a bad example for children".[4][20][21] Along with Are You There God?, Blubber, and Where the Sidewalk Ends, the book was challenged at a 1983 school-board meeting in Xenia, Ohio.[22] Proponents of the Xenia ban stated that the book "teaches children to lie, spy, back-talk, and curse", but the board voted to keep the books in the school libraries.[22][23]
Fitzhugh wrote two sequels to the book: The Long Secret (1965) and Sport (1979, published posthumously).[24][25] Both books received mixed reviews.[26][27]
Sport is a spin-off that focuses on Simon "Sport" Rocque, expanding upon his brief family background covered in Harriet the Spy. As his parents are divorced, Sport lives with his father, who is a struggling writer who has been focusing on a book (a big gamble) rather than the steady income of journal/newspaper articles, with Sport managing their finances. Their financial problems are exacerbated once Sport's grandfather Simon Vane (from his mother's side) becomes terminally ill and stops sending regular payments to Sport. Things change for the better once Sport's father meets the kind Kate, who becomes a good stepmother. However, Simon's will has named Sport as the main beneficiary to the $30 million family fortune, much to the chagrin of Sport's mother Charlotte Vane and her sister. Charlotte, an absentee mother who has been living well abroad in Europe most of the time, returns to New York City upon hearing of her father's illness, scheming to increase her share of Simon's inheritance by kidnapping Sport and imprisoning him in the Plaza Hotel for a week.[28]
In 2002, a sequel Harriet Spies Again appeared; written by Helen Ericson, it also received mixed reviews.[29][30][31] Another sequel, Harriet the Spy, Double Agent by Maya Gold, was published in 2005;[32][33] one review of that book stated "there's not much to interest readers here."[34]
Harriet the Spy (Harper & Row, 1964); also Harriet, the Spy
In September 2004, Mainframe Entertainment announced that Protocol Entertainment will produce a new Harriet the Spy live-action television series, consisting of at least 22 half-hour episodes, with 2 Friends Entertainment acting as executive producers and US sales agent and Mainframe retaining international distribution rights.[39][40]
Karen Louise Erdrich is a Native American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
Louise Perkins Fitzhugh was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Fitzhugh is best known for her 1964 novel Harriet the Spy, a fiction work about an adolescent girl's predisposition with a journal covering the foibles of her friends, her classmates, and the strangers she is captivated by. The novel was later adapted into a live action film in 1996. The sequel novel, The Long Secret, was published in 1965, and its follow-up book, Sport, was published posthumously in 1979. Fitzhugh also wrote Nobody's Family Is Going to Change, which was later adapted into a short film and a play.
Elizabeth E. Wein is an American-born writer best known for her young adult historical fiction. She holds both American and British citizenship.
Martha Elizabeth "Libba" Bray is an American writer of young adult novels including the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine, and The Diviners.
Marijane Agnes Meaker was an American writer who, along with Tereska Torres, was credited with launching the lesbian pulp fiction genre, the only accessible novels on that theme in the 1950s.
Anastasia Again! (1981) is a young-adult novel by Lois Lowry. It is part of her Anastasia and Sam series and the sequel to Anastasia Krupnik.
Harriet the Spy is a 1996 American coming-of-age comedy film directed by Bronwen Hughes in her feature film directorial debut, and starring Michelle Trachtenberg in her major film acting debut. It co-stars Rosie O'Donnell, J. Smith-Cameron, Gregory Smith, and Vanessa Lee Chester. Based on the 1964 novel of the same name by Louise Fitzhugh, the film follows a sixth-grade student who aspires to become a writer and spy.
Louise Plummer is an American author of young adult fiction and a retired associate professor of English at Brigham Young University. She lives in New York, New York with her writer/professor husband Tom. Together they have four sons.
Ursula Nordstrom was publisher and editor-in-chief of juvenile books at Harper & Row from 1940 to 1973. She is credited with presiding over a transformation in children's literature in which morality tales written for adult approval gave way to works that instead appealed to children's imaginations and emotions.
Wake is a 2008 novel by Lisa McMann centered on seventeen-year-old Janie Hannagan's involuntary power which thrusts her into others' dreams. The novel follows Janie through parts of her young adulthood, focusing mainly on the events that occur during her senior year, in which she meets an enigmatic elderly woman, and becomes involved with Cabel, a loner and purported drug-dealer at Fieldridge High School. The book is set up in a diary like form, specifying the date and time at which each event occurs. The two books that follow Wake in the trilogy are Fade and Gone. Wake debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list for children's chapter books, and garnered several awards for young adult literature.
Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars is a 2010 television film starring Jennifer Stone that premiered on March 19, 2010, on Movie Central and The Movie Network in Canada, and on March 26, 2010, on Disney Channel in the United States. It is an adaptation of the book Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, the second after the 1996 Harriet the Spy film that starred Michelle Trachtenberg as Harriet. The film was produced by 9 Story Entertainment. Vanessa Morgan, who starred as Marion in the movie, went on to star in My Babysitter's a Vampire and its subsequent television series, which also aired on Disney Channel.
Emily Jenkins, who sometimes uses the pen name E. Lockhart, is an American writer of children's picture books, young-adult novels, and adult fiction. She is known best for the Ruby Oliver quartet, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and We Were Liars.
Sherri L. Smith is an American writer. Her novel Flygirl was selected as one of the American Library Association's 2010 Best Books for Young Adults.
The Long Secret is a children's novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh that was released by Harper & Row on October 27, 1965. It is a sequel or "companion" to Harriet the Spy (1964), the only one published during Fitzhugh's lifetime.
Monica Kulling is a Canadian writer of children's books based in Toronto, Ontario.
Girl detective is a genre of detective fiction featuring a young, often teen-aged, female protagonist who solves crimes as a hobby.
Liar & Spy is a children's novel written by Rebecca Stead published in 2012 that is set in Brooklyn and describes the adventures of Georges and Safer, two middle school students who are working to unmask a suspected spy in their building. At the same time, Georges is experiencing a casual bullying that adults in his life seem to minimize. Stead was the first American author to win the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Liar & Spy, in 2013.
Joy McCullough is an American author of young adult fiction. She is best known for her verse novel Blood Water Paint. She lives in Seattle, Washington. She attended Northwestern University.
Harriet the Spy is an American animated television series for Apple TV+, loosely based on the book of the same name by Louise Fitzhugh. The series premiered on November 19, 2021. Season 2 premiered on May 5, 2023.
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References
1 2 "Harriet, the spy". LC Online Catalog. Library of Congress. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
1 2 Elleman, Barbara (1987). "Current Trends in Literature for Children"(PDF). Library Trends. 35 (3). Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: 413–26. Archived from the original(PDF) on July 14, 2014. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
↑ "The Year's Best Juveniles". The New York Times Book Review. December 6, 1964. p.52.
↑ Goodwin, Polly (January 24, 1965). "The Junior Bookshelf". Chicago Tribune. p.B7.
↑ Taylor, Mark (February 21, 1965). "An Excellent Trio for Children". Los Angeles Times. p.B7.
↑ Helson, Ravenna (1976). "Change, Tradition, and Critical Styles in the Contemporary World of Children's Books". Children's Literature. 5 (1): 22–39. doi:10.1353/chl.0.0757.
↑ Woods, George; O'Connor, Margaret F. (February 25, 1968). "Best in the Field: For Children". New York Times Book Review: Paperbacks. Section 7, Part 2, pages 18 & 20.
↑ Sutton, Roger (July–August 2001). "Bring Out Your Dead". Horn Book Magazine. 77 (4). Archived from the original on May 24, 2012. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
↑ Schmitz, Terri (September–October 2001). "Characters You Can Count On". Horn Book Magazine. 77 (5): 557–567.
Molson, Francis J. (1974). "Another Look at Harriet the Spy". Elementary English. 51 (7): 963–970. doi:10.1353/chq.1991.0016.
Wolf, Virginia L. (1975). "Harriet the Spy". Children's Literature. 4 (1): 120–126. doi:10.1353/chl.0.0700.
Paul, Lissa (1989). "The Feminist Writer as Heroine in Harriet the Spy". The Lion and the Unicorn. 13 (1): 67–73. doi:10.1353/uni.0.0433. S2CID144852947.
John, Judith Gero (1991). "The Legacy of Peter Pan and Wendy: Images of Lost Innocence and Social Consequences in Harriet the Spy". Children's Literature Association Quarterly 1991 Proceedings. 1991: 168–173. doi:10.1353/chq.1991.0016.
Bernstein, Robin (2000–2001). "'Too Realistic' and 'Too Distorted': The Attack on Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and the Gaze of the Queer Child". Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture. 12 (1–2): Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture.
Bernstein, Robin (2011). "The Queerness of Harriet the Spy". In Abate, Michelle Ann; Kidd, Kenneth B. (eds.). Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. pp.111–120. ISBN978-0-472-07146-3.
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