The climax of this book is deeply satisfying. We truly love to see a rich, disinterested socialite parent get thrown over and the child being able to actually stay with someone who loves them. Also, the message that it's okay and good to be angry about injustices is very good and that being 'ladylike' doesn't preclude this.

This is actually a re-read for me, I read this many years ago, as a child and a pre-teen. I enjoyed this book okay, but I had a few issues with it. It is basically a continuation of Harriet The Spy, a young girl who fancies herself a detective, and she's very nosy and curious. This book deals much more with Harriet's friend Beth Ellen and her life. It also involves a mystery where someone is leaving disturbing notes all over town, sort of like fortune cookies, in that they have uncanny expressions in them. I had an issue with the religious overtones used throughout the book, in the sense that maybe they were too mature or strong for middle grade kids. Also, I didn't care for how Mary Beth's mom treated her own daughter, like she couldn't care less about her one way or another, that it was all for show. Basically, I didn't like her mom at all, but I realize that we, as readers, aren't supposed to like her. Overall, I liked the first book much better, Harriet seemed much more fun in that book. 3 stars for this one.

The under appreciated red headed step sister of Harriet the Spy. Just as good, and in many ways, better.

"That's it, thought Beth Ellen: Never be afraid to wear glasses."
Can't remember when I first read this, but I know I was originally put off by the somewhat negative depiction of Harriet; I felt disloyal. But now I can appreciate Fitzhugh's realism. I will always adore bossy and screechy Harriet, but that doesn't mean that I can't cheer on Beth Ellen, too. "The mice shall inherit the earth, it's said."
Click below for a wise and impressive review (and more fabulous Fitzhugh quotes):
http://jezebel.com/362472/the-long-se...

I read Harriet the Spy multiple times when I was a kid. I loved it. I know I had this book, but didn't remember anything about it when Carlos Lozada recommended it in the summer reading episode of the New York Times Matter of Opinion podcast.

I found a copy for $1.00 at a local used bookstore, so decided to read it. It is wild! So different than kids books you read nowadays. There are definitely some dated things, especially anti-fat comments, so you may want to read it first before handing it over to your kids. These kids go everywhere and talk about everything, including a lot about religion and careers. Harriet is quite loud and impetuous, but also very curious and funny.

The book made me nostalgic for my childhood where we could go anywhere without our parents really knowing what we were doing. It certainly wasn't as safe as today, but I still wish kids today had the freedom that I did.

Characterizations are dated (near cringe-worthy in parts) but Fitzhugh is a bold, bold writer, unafraid in her tackling of real issues: two-faced adults, religion, asshole kids, and puberty. I’m hard pressed to think of another children’s novel that addresses both atheism and fundamentalism.

I liked this and would have given it the three-star rating to indicate as much but there is a short stout brown & white spotted dog in here named Moo-Moo and she gets a star of her own.

Harriet the Spy was one of my favorite books as a child. I wanted Harriet's life: she lived in a brownstone in Manhattan and had a very independent existence of roaming the neighborhood, spying on people and writing it all down in a notebook. But I never read The Long Secret until now; my small-town library did not have it, and anyway I felt less interested in a story that was all about Beth Ellen, who seemed the meekest and least interesting of Harriet's friends.

I came across a reference to this book recently somewhere and wondered how it would strike me now, excited to meet up with Harriet again after so long, and in the meantime having learned a little about the author, who was as rich and eccentric as many of the characters who populate her books.

Strange. It was strange. Rather in the way that Harriet the Spy is strange -- full of abrupt changes of tone, odd metaphors, status markers that are never explained. Secret takes place not in Manhattan but on Long Island, which is where Harriet and Beth Ellen, um, summer. One of the things I liked best about this book is the setting: Long Island, specifically Water Mill, a hamlet of Southampton, back when it was still inhabited by what I can only describe as the old-fashioned rich people, who did not live in 20,000-square-foot houses, when there were still potato fields and Harriet and Beth Ellen rode around on bikes that they leaned against hedges and did not bother to lock. I don't know this world, but I can imagine it, and it seems nice.

Like Harriet's Manhattan was for a younger me, it's a fantasy world, but this time with an adult's eyes I'm seeing it all rather differently. Harriet seems insufferable: bumptious, impulsive, a yeller, mean to her supposed friend Beth Ellen. Who is way, way richer than I understood in my earlier readings of Harriet the Spy. Beth Ellen is long-black-car-with-a chauffeur, house-full-of-servants, never-needs-to-work-in-her-life rich. She is being raised by her grandmother, because her father has walked out in disgust, and once we meet Beth Ellen's mother, we understand why.

Beth Ellen herself has not seen her mother for seven or eight years; her reappearance on the scene is one of the main plot drivers of this story. The mother is beautiful and terrible: spoiled, frivolous and vain. Such a monster, in fact, that she is both fun to read about and unbelievable.

Her reappearance causes the emergence of feelings in Beth Ellen, who seems to have spent most of her life suppressing them (and this is perhaps why she finds comfort in the irrepressible Harriet). Beth Ellen's finally finding her voice was gratifying, though I never felt she was in much danger from her terrible mother.

The rest of the plot was a bit of a disorderly mess, I thought. And I was struck by how often the author describes fat people with a gruesome, or perhaps gleeful, fascination.

Yet as I think back over the book (having been unable to post this review for several days because Goodreads kept giving me error message when I tried to do and also gave me error messages when I tried to complain about the bug, THANKS A MILLION, GOODREADS) I am struck by how there is something psychologically true about Beth Ellen's quiet rage, something that Fitzhugh got absolutely right. And that this psychological aptness was also something I liked about Harriet the Spy: her utter loneliness when all her classmates turn on her after the notebook is discovered.

I remember reading this book as a kid and not being too nuts about it, but after rereading it, I just love it. One of my favorite things about Fitzhugh's writing is that she makes most of the adults in her books out to be complete idiots. That scene in the Shark's Tooth Inn-classic. I think this book may just be too much for all but the most sophisticated of kid readers. Who of them are going to see Agatha Plummer as a total cougar, and Wallace ("HUP!" love that), as a money grubbing gigolo. Then there's Bunny....So many phonies. I did like though, that she made Harriet's parents, who were very unsympathetic characters in the first book, really caring and loving and wise. Such a satire. Love Beth Ellen, and her new found independence. Harriet was a bit over the top, always shouting and sort of obnoxious, though. Wonderful book.

I loved Harriet the Spy, and was so excited to read this next one...but as a kid I found it much more melancholy...I think now that I look back on it, it's because the book actually does capture that melancholy feeling of puberty, of having to leave childhood behind, of being separated out from childhood by what is happening to your body. That is part of what is brilliant about the book. But much more evocative for girls, than boys, I'd think....

Truly original and compassionate book about early adolescence. Looks like it's being marketed as "Harriet the Spy #2" but the mood is very different and the focus is on Harriet's timid friend Beth Ellen. Evocative pen and ink drawings-- how I love a chapter book with illustrations. This was one of my favorites as a preteen, wonderful to see how well it holds up. I will try to write some more thoughts soon-- in the meantime, highly recommend.

“Shy people are angry people”

I read this book many years ago and really didn't really like. I can't remember why now... but that's besides the point. I, suprisingly, enjoyed this more than Harriet the Spy. I liked Beth Ellen as a narrator. I enjoyed feeling her emotions throughout the book. The mystery in this book had me hooked and the ending was great.