I enjoyed this much more than the last Harriet book. I still think this is too much for small kids.

This truly is a period piece. The classism, sexism, racism... pretty much all the ism's are represented here. It's awful, but in the best ways. It made me laugh I'll give it that.

This is a very difficult and over priced book to get a hold of, so it must be quite rare now, but I'd read[[ASIN:B01K3N5LX4 The Long Secret]] and the two spin offs and wanted to complete my collection. I think this follows The Long Secret, if you want the exact reading order.

Although mostly, this book is based around Sport, Harriet's sidekick from the first book. This leads up to Sport's father getting married (quite quickly I might add) to Kate, who we meet in some of the later books, and finally allows Sport to start being a kid again, rather than worrying about money. Harriet does appear in this book, but not until a good chunk of the way through it, and Janie only gets a passing mention. Sport also has to do a lot of growing up in this book, with his father getting married, getting a stepmum and having to deal with his own childish mum and his grandfather dying.

You also get to see a lot of Sport's world, without Harriet's blinkers on. He goes to an all boys school after sixth grade, and we meet some of his other friends. I did find the language that Louise used for the pre-teen boys very annoying though, as clearly they were supposed to be swearing, but it was just blank this and blank that. For some reason, I did get the boys in my head saying "blank" a lot of the time. I didn't find them very well described however, Sport's friends, but they do come across as very loyal to Sport.

His mother though, what a money grabbing cow. From reading The Long Secret and the spin offs, it is a common recurring theme throughout Louise's writing, that some mothers are viewed in the worst way and a lot of the time they are described as ditzy money hungry airheads. Possibly this comes from Louise's experiences in New York as her[[ASIN:1580057691 posthumous biography]] states.

I did like the effect of Kate in Sport's life and his father's. Rather than go down the stereotypical route of the wicked, evil stepmother, Kate is kind, caring, and fits into their lives like she was meant to be there.

There's nothing really much in the way of puberty talk, like there are in some of the later books, apart from Sport's friends going googly eyed over Beth Ellen and Harriet - and Harriet's notebook does make a couple of appearances. There are two uses of the "n" word, just for note.

Having gone from only believing that there was one Harriet the Spy book, I have now read them all in less than a month. My dad, being the one who originally introduced me to Harriet, has not been able to get into them unfortunately, but still feels the same magic that he had when he first read Harriet. The latter books have lost that Louise Fitzhugh magic, but I would still say that they are worth reading, if you liked the original Harriet The Spy, but want to read more about her friends, rather than just focusing on her.

I loved all the "Harriet the Spy" books when I was ages 11-12. I know I read this in April 1985 because I mentioned it in my journal from that time.

Sport is a wonderful book. I really enjoyed it. Sport, an eleven year old with divorced parents, is a strong character who's easy to get behind and root for. He's dealing with his grandfather who is dying and his mother who has returned from Europe. Sport is used to living with his father and taking care of him. he's been doing the finances forever. He cooks, cleans and basically runs the home. His father is a caring man but easily distracted. He is a writer staying home and working during the day. He trusts and loves Sport more than anything. While Sport's mother doesn't want anything to do with him...until now. All of a sudden she wants full custody. The reason is greed and it's up to Sport to prove it so he can remain with his father and his new girlfriend who Sport is getting to know. Kate is different from any of the other women his father has dated....she's really nice. She doesn't care that their budget is super tight or that his father is scatterbrained. She seems to actually be fine with all that....and she cares for Sport more than his mother ever has right off the bat. Can Sports remain with his loving father or will his rich mother and her expensive lawyers be able to steal him away?
This book deals with greed and divorce. And it does it very well. The writing is superb with insight to what a young boy might be feeling while his world is changing around him. The characters are well defined. It's a page turner. I couldn't wait to read what happened next.

Loved it!

Well, that was a weird- ass book.

My dad is a crazy writer and my mother is an even crazier rich, ridiculously acting woman. My best friend is Harriet, and she spends all her time writing in notebooks.

Again, what more can I say?

Sport (1953) is Fitzhugh's darkest of the Harriet trio. Kidnapping, custody issues, ugly racial tensions between police and the neighborhood, n-word two times. It's also the first book I read, and until this year, the only one I read of the trilogy. I still really enjoy it, and now that I'm older, the concept of a mother kidnapping her own son for custody and money no longer seems so farfetched and the idea of Sport parenting his own father seems even more tragic. Even before I became a food writer, I knew that the food descriptions in Sport were some of the best I'd ever read. She made me crave tomatoes, steak, and peas when I hated tomatoes, steak, and peas.

Given that Fitzhugh's wealthy parents split up and her father retained custody of Fitzhugh (just as in Sport's case), it's hard not to look at Sport's mother and Beth Ellen mother in The Long Secret and not wonder if those rich, skinny, horrible people were based on Fitzhugh's own mother. And yet, there's the gentle Kate that Simon's dad marries and Harriet's mother to look at as examples of ideal mothers. I have half a mind to do some extensive digging into Fitzhugh's life and try to learn some more about her. She died so young and yet seems to have lived an interesting life in Tennessee, New York, D.C., France, and Italy.

Harriet the Spy was a childhood favorite.

A little dated. Spent a fair amount of time explaining to 8yo why the phrases or events were troubling to me and not examples of acceptable language/ behavior.

This is a compassionate book, full of incredible dialogue, quirky moments that echo the films of Hal Ashby, and some pointed racial and social commentary that hits home, even today. My only quibble is that Sport's mom is so horrible, I don't understand what his father ever saw in her!