Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Harriet the Spy
Book Review: Caution: darkness and complexity ahead
Summary: 1 Stars
Just a cautionary note to parents. This isn't a "fun" or innocent book for younger children, as you might imagine from a cursory look, or from what you might glean from the title and packaging. We got a few chapters into to before my daughter asked (begged) me to stop reading it. A lot of it is just downright mean, and not in any helpful sense. On reflection, why would we want to introduce young kids to such themes as alienation, existentialism, class warfare, entitlement, and on and on? Can't we allow them a few years of innocence and fun before the onslaught of the teenage turmoil and adulthood? And some of the effort to introduce complexity comes across as risible. I mean quoting Dostoesky? Honestly, how pretentious. If you want darkness, stimulation, character development, and excellent writing in a completely original imaginative landscape then try the Guardians of Ga'hoole series. My 8-year old has read the first seven volumes and can't put them down.Book Review: Children's book at it's best
Summary: 4 Stars
Louise Fitzbaugh's book involves an 11 year old girl with a fiercely independent streak who doesn't realize how dependent on others she actually is. Her goal is to become a world famous spy and considers herself "working" when she wanders around the city spying on others and recording all of her observations in her notebook. What she discovers through her travels is how others can be hurt by her words and also how much she needs her friends and family despite her initial opinion that she needs no one but herself.
Fitzbaugh's writing pulls the reader into the story and allows you to identify with exactly what the main character, Harriet, is experiencing and feeling. It is a perfect encapsulation of exactly how a girl that age is feeling and the range of emotions young girls deal with as they are trying desparately to join the adult world while retaining their childhood fun.
This book will be enjoyed by readers of all ages.
Book Review: Complex, fascinating book
Summary: 5 Stars
I absolutely LOVED this book when I was a child. I think like many other reviewers, I responded to the book because I identified with Harriet as a somewhat odd, intellectual, socially awkward child. Harriet was my heroine because of her perseverance and her integrity, and her detached sense of being an observer of the world. In the 60's and 70's, such complex portaits of the world of children were unusual (Judy Blume came a little later, and was also a favorite). I started eating tomato sandwiches every day for lunch, formed a spy club with my friends (I was always Harriet, of course), bought a composition notebook and took notes in BIG BLOCK LETTERS, just like Harriet.
One caveat: Reading the book again as an adult with my young daughter, it seems much more negative than I'd remembered. Harriet lacks empathy or compassion for the feelings of her friends; her parents are neglectful and incompetent; the departure of her beloved nurse, Ole Golly, seems much more intimately connected to her later troubles. My daughter asked pointed questions about these issues. Thankfully, the detached parenting portrayed in the book (not only by Harriet's parents, but also those of her friends) is dated today. On the other hand, the portrayals of the characters are still as vivid and lively as I'd remembered, and the book is still very very funny.
Book Review: Dated Yet Timely
Summary: 5 Stars
Harriet The Spy was first published in 1964. I loved it when I first read it as a child a few years later, and have always remembered it fondly. Harriet M. Welsch lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She leads a pampered life with parents who love her but don't spend much time with her. Her primary caregiver is her nurse, Ole Golly, who has encouraged her to write down her thoughts and observations in notebooks which will provide fodder for a writing career. Every afternoon Harriet spies on neighbors and observes their foibles. Harriet is absolutely honest when she makes a note, and this gets her into trouble when her classmates discover and read her notebook.
Harriet The Spy is about growing away from childhood things. She loses Ole Golly and has to depend on herself for the first time. She has to recognize that even though honesty is essential, sometimes you have to lie, too. By the end of the book Harriet is still 11 years old, but the reader will have a strong idea of the kind of honest, admirable woman she will become.
Harriet's world seemed strange to me when I first read it, and I suspect many of her other readers and admirers have also found it odd: large private houses and apartments staffed with servants, exclusive private schools, elegant parents who are part of High Society. But even if you don't live in a brownstone on the Upper East Side you'll still find a lot of familiar things in Harriet The Spy: growing up, loneliness, alienation, friendships made and unmade, and hardest of all, learning to accept others' differences.
Book Review: Disappointed
Summary: 1 Stars
From the many reviews here it seems this is a love-it-or-hate-it book. My kids, who have always loved to read, read it in elementary school 10 or 12 years ago and did not enjoy it. Having recently read it myself, I now understand why. There is no warmth here. So much of the book seems to be social commentary specific to a particular time and place and really aimed at adults, not children. Harriet is an obnoxious kid raised by oblivious, absentee parents and a strange nanny. Referred to inexplicably as Ole Golly, the nanny, the only real guiding force in Harriet's life since birth, leaves when Harriet is 11 with hardly a backward glance. She tells Harriet, basically, to get over it. Of course Harriet falls apart and acts out, desperately needing love and attention. But I admit that she is so unlikable that when her angry classmates dump ink all over her, I was cheering them on. The other children in the book provide the only consequences Harriet receives for her horrible behavior. Considering her actions at school (including whacking off another girl's hair and writing commentary about her friends' parents for the school newspaper, which unbelievably, actually gets printed) the lack of backlash from other parents makes no sense at all. Harriet learns absolutely nothing over the course of the book, except that she can do whatever she wants and in the end, get away with it. I honestly do not see the appeal of this book.