I used to grab a notebook and wander through my friend's yard pretending I was Harriet.

As a kid I thought I was a mix of Harriet (bold, speaks her mind, creative) and Janie (smart, takes no bull, a little intimidating). As an adult I now know I am actually Mr. Welsch (give me a nice martini you finks, mumble mumble) and Harrison Withers (never answer the doorbell, just leave me and my twenty-six cats alone). This book holds up- loved it as a kid and really enjoyed it 25 years later.

I’m pretty sure that most of those who happen to read my comments about this book will strongly disagree with me. I don’t claim to be right, I’m just pointing out that there’s more than one way to look at the issues the book raises.
I hope that most of the eleven-year-olds who read the book get the message Ms. Fitzhugh intended. But personally, I’m surprised at the laudatory comments it has garnered from so many supposedly perceptive people. Harriet reminds me of some of the most despicable kids I encountered in my childhood. She’s spoiled, self-absorbed and unlikely ever to understand the error of her ways. If others are offended by her actions, it’s their problem, not hers. Case in point: When the cook complains about being crashed into for the umpteenth time, she writes “This cook certainly make a lot of noise. Maybe we should get a quieter cook.”
Harriet is the kid her parents and their lifestyle has made her; but that doesn't address the problem she has become.
Regrettably, the Harriets of this world, (thankfully a minority) who say and write and do derogatory and hurtful things toward others do not change their behavior. They derive personal satisfaction from bullying, badmouthing and abusing other kids — and as adults, they keep right on doing it. Now and then, they run up against someone who pushes back. Hard. But that doesn’t change their behavior, it just makes them select their victims more carefully. Let’s be honest: we’ve all met them in life.
I therefore have great difficulty in assigning a rating to the book; it obviously has literary merit and has been greatly enjoyed by many readers. In fairness, I must acknowledge that I was one of those kids who tolerated a few Harriets; until I pushed back. Very hard. So, this was anything but an enjoyable read for me. A reluctant 2 stars.

I wanted to be Harriet. I even started carrying a notebook around and writing what people were doing in it, just like she did.

This is one of those rare moments when the movie is better than the book. The movie is so cute! Now that I've read the book, I want to rewatch the movie.

Book 33/100 of 2015

4.5/5

I re-read Harriet the Spy last week and found myself noticing for the first time how deeply subversive and honest it is. Even by contemporary standards it's a bracing read -- hard to imagine what reading this book must have been like when it was first published in 1964.

Something that moved me this time around was how defiantly Harriet and Janie resist the half-hearted efforts of their parents to make them behave with more conventional femininity, and how quickly their parents give up that scheme (as represented by the specter of DANCE SCHOOL). As little as their parents understand Harriet and Janie, they also seem to have no real interest in changing or controlling them.

HATED THIS BOOK! Seriously, what is the big deal about it? I never read it as a kid, but it was on a list of "Books about Brave Girls" and I thought that we'd give it a go for a read aloud with my girls. WORST BOOK EVER! I HATED Harriet! She was so nosy, so rude, and I kept waiting and waiting for her to learn her lesson, and SHE NEVER DID! In fact, in the end she comes right out and says that she should just LIE! EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what I am trying to teach my girls! We had a good discussion at the end of how we should NOT act like Harriet, and how disappointed we were in this book. Lame, lame, lame!

As it turns out, this book just didn't age well with me. While I get what the author was going for, I'd have to agree with my first review.

First review
I feel as if I enjoyed this one more the first time through. I don't know if it's just my mood, or what, but I was horribly annoyed by almost every single character, even (and sometimes especially) Harriet. I know that children can be mean, bratty little things, but it grated on me to read about it today. However, I do always enjoy the Mrs. Plumber and Mr. Withers stories; the latter especially goes to show that sometimes you just need a little kitty in your life.

Harriet the Spy was one of my very favorites when I was young; I'm happy to cede the World's Biggest Harriet Fan crown to El, but I was pretty amped to run across this at a stoop sale.

When I first read it - possibly also when I second read it - I immediately started carrying my own notebook around and writing in it all the time. Everyone did, right? I got in super trouble for that, too, because my fourth grade teacher - I think it was fourth? - confiscated it, and then read it, and then I had to talk about why I was saying such mean things about all my classmates. And this is why teachers who don't read books are at a disadvantage.

It holds up wonderfully, and that's nice. It's still a book with great insight into how kids work, and not a little insight into adults while we're at it. And its central message - other than "Blow up the school," which is definitely suggested, and remember when you could just suggest that, and everyone would be like *shrug* yeah, that does sound like a decent idea, one has to admit. Anyway, the other central message is that writing is a great way to explore one's feelings and exercise one's brain, and that really stuck with me, to the point where nowadays I pretend to write book reviews just so I can ramble about my fourth grade teacher. I don't remember her name but she was not great. You know what, I'm pretty sure I came out better than she did. I wonder if she's dead. She might be.

Harriet's a tough nut: weird and terrifyingly bright and given to breaking and entering. (And perhaps gay.) I was of course not a weird kid, I was perfect, but if I had been weird, this book would have given me a lot of great ideas for how to handle my weirdness, and it would have done the same for my mom, and I would say this is a pretty good book to read no matter what level of weirdness you and yours are at.

This was a deep favorite of my friend El's, and we bonded hard over our mutual love for it. We bonded hard over a lot of things. I stumbled across this review today and saw that the first thing I did was link to El's review. I do that a lot - my reviews are littered with links to El's reviews. I want these to be entertaining, and often the most entertaining thing I can do is to link to El.

We won't get any more reviews from El. But she did get to no less than 1335 of them before she died, so that's not bad. Once again, this is what she sounded like.

I loved this book when my wonderful 5th-grade teacher, Mr Josiassen, read it aloud to our class. Finally picked it up again, out of nostalgia and curiosity, and - yes! - it’s as good as I remember it more than 40 years ago!
Harriet is winsomely spunky, intent upon observing (“spying”) and writing, just as I was at her age. (And perhaps still am.) The cast of classmates is entertaining as are the (usually clueless) teachers and parents. And Ole Golly: if only every child had such a person in their lives. Harriet learns about friendship, family, forgiveness, all while maintaining a strong sense of herself and her passion for writing.
You have to read this book. Read it aloud to your kids. It truly is a classic.

It's surprising how mean-spirited this book is.

Eleven year old Harriet wants to be a spy. She writes down all of her thoughts about everyone in a notebook she always keeps on her. She also goes around town spying on as many people as she can, learning things and always, always writing down what she thinks.

This backfires tremendously when her schoolmates find her lost notebook, and read every single honest and often nasty thing she wrote about them. And just as her favorite nurse, and the only one who really deals with her on any emotional level, leaves her. Can she deal with the payback?

It's a typical kid's book set-up, but it's distinguished by one of the most unlikable protagonists next to Sheila in Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. Harriet's observations aren't just ill-mannered or rude, they hurt. This is because they are deadly accurate, and virtually everyone she knows has some kind of deep-seated issue that she spied out. She finds the weaknesses of all of her classmates and even the adults around her with the trained eye of a writer. As a spy, she's a great one; but as a human being she's terrible.

To a point, this is more the thoughtless cruelty of a child than the considered cruelty of an adult. But then, when she's discovered, she isn't really repentant. She's mean and she's hurt, but she learns nothing. She gets bullied, and bullies back. The worst thing about it is that rather than learn empathy or the right lesson, the book ends with her having learned nothing and the horrible lesson that it's better to lie to people if you can't apologize to them and mean it.

I can't blame Harriet fully though. Virtually every adult in this book is unlikable to a degree. Sport's dad is a worthless layabout. Harriet's parents don't really seem to be a part of her life, with Ole Golly as a surrogate mother/friend to her. Ole Golly is a good nurse, but a bad person; she manages Harriet, but really doesn't confide in her. Or even care that much. Most of the adult portrayals save for the man with twenty-seven cats are negative in some manner. Harriet is a child who is outside the world as an observer. No one ever seems to truly bring her inside some place, and I think this is what created the thoughtless, hurting, and even mean child that she is.

It makes for an unsettling book for those of us who read it late in life. Like a children's version of those interminable adult literary novels where everyone hates each other and you get depressed after reading it. You dislike Harriet's thoughts, because any empathy in them towards others is dangerously absent. But you also dislike the payback she gets, because she's obviously in pain and it also makes her even nastier to have the sole things in the world that she draws pleasure from (earlier, Ole Golly, later, her notebook) taken away from her. And you dislike the lack of lesson at the end, because Harriet needs to change and become human. She needs to grow if just to save herself.