Harriet the Spy

Title: Harriet the Spy
Author: Louise Fitzhugh
ISBN: 0440416795

Other Books in Series: The Long Summer, Sport

Plot Summary: Harriet is 11 years old, the precocious daughter of well-to-do parents growing up in Manhattan in the early sixties. Her best friend, Sport, has become an adult before his time in his efforts to run life for himself and his struggling writer father. Janie, Harriet's best female friend, experiments with various chemical solutions in an effort to shock her overly jovial mother. All three resist efforts to make them conform to societal norms, particularly the girls, who have less interest than their peers in being "feminine." In addition to taking notes on her classmates, parents, cook, maid, and live-in caretaker, a stern woman she nicknames Ole Golly, Harriet has what she calls her regular "spy route": a motley collection of people she observes covertly, for no other reason but that she finds them interesting. However, Harriet's carefully constructed double life is about to come to an end. After Ole Golly and her new boyfriend take Harriet out for a night on the town, Harriet's outraged parents fire her on the spot; she subsequently marries the boyfriend and moves to Canada. She is discovered in the house of one of her regular spyees and sent packing, never to return again. To make matters even worse, Harriet's classmates discover and read her diary, an event which turns even Sport and Janie against her. Harriet must now figure out how to live without the woman who was her main support, conform to her parents' social expectations, deal with changes in her routine - and, most importantly, mend fences with her two best friends.


Critical Evaluation: Harriet, like many young protagonists, has a vivid imagination and fantasy life. Unlike them, though, she slakes her thirst for knowledge by detailed, often covert observation of human behavior. The mature reader, much like Ole Golly in the book, may see a bright future ahead for this clearly intelligent, if socially awkward girl: if not a spy per se, then a journalist or at the very least a writer of some sort. The situations she gets herself into, although certainly fantastic, are within the realm of plausibility, and the people she observes in her perambulations paint a vivid picture of the New York of her era.


Reader's Annotation: Harriet, a precocious girl growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan: spies and takes notes on everyone from her classmates to neighbors to her nanny, Ole Golly. But when her spy diary falls into the wrong hands, the consequences prove almost fatal to Harriet's social life and friendships.

About the Author: Louise Fitzhugh was born in 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee, and lived with her father subsequent to her parents' divorce. She attended three different universities before graduating from Barnard College. She dated a man named Ed Thompson as a high school student and was briefly married to him, but subsequently dated women exclusively. She wrote and published a number of children's books, many of which dealt with girls who did not fit into traditional feminine roles. She wrote a book called Amelia about two girls falling in love, but the manuscript was subsequently lost. Several of her later works, including Sport, were published posthumously following her death from a brain aneurysm at age 46.

Genre: Fiction

Curriculum Ties: Anthropology, Journalism

Booktalking Ideas:

Hook: Ole Golly, in a letter to Harriet, tells her that she has to learn to do two things: apologize and lie.
Approach: Scene-based.
Ideas for Booktalk: Discuss what Ole Golly means by apologizing and lying. Harriet must apologize for having offended, hurt or wronged others even if she doesn't feel like it, and learn to tell "white lies" to ease social interaction, while never lying to herself. Examine the extent to which Harriet puts these suggestions into practice in the rest of the book, and what if any effect this has on her interpersonal relationships.

Hook: Harriet's relationship with her parents.
Approach: Character and plot-based.
Ideas for Booktalk: Relationship before and after the "diary incident": absent yet loving at first, then firmer and more watchful, particularly after Ole Golly leaves. Mother tells her stories, interacts pleasantly enough, but cannot understand Harriet's refusal to budge from her habits, wardrobe, and overall lack of femininity. Father is more affectionate, rolls around on the rug pretending to be an onion with her, gives her movie star photos and playful nicknames, and is overall less concerned about her disinclination to act like a lady. However, the high-pressure nature of his job means that he is seldom home. When Harriet no longer has a nanny to look after her or a spy route to look forward to, the distance between her and her parents become more obvious.

Reading Level/Interest Age: Middle School

Challenge Issues: Mild offensive language, anti-authority.
Harriet does not conform to most of society's expectations of young women of the time, from her attire to her frequent disrespect for figures of authority in her life. She tells her parents she'll be "damned" if she goes to dance school, ruins the cook's cake for no apparent reason, frequently skewers her teachers in her journal and stands up to them in public. Ole Golly is virtually the only adult who commands any respect from Harriet, and even then Harriet cannot refrain from writing about her in a disrespectful fashion. However, although Harriet does not mature in any traditional sense by the book's end, one gets the sense that she has learned a great deal about social interaction, and that it has increased her ability to act as a decent human being towards others. If this book is viewed as the saga of a misfit learning how to get along with those different from herself, it becomes apparent that Harriet, although never destined to become a conformist, will at least learn how to become a functional human being. Furthermore, as she has now inspired generations of girls to become writers, I would particularly recommend that parents of daughters at least consider giving this book a try.

Why I Chose This Book: This book was a favorite of mine as a child, and repeated rereadings have not diminished my enjoyment of Harriet's adventures and quirky outlook on life. Although high school-age readers approaching this book for the first time might not be able to relate to a younger heroine, they may have a perspective on her experiences that younger readers might miss. Those who reread it at any age will be sure to find elements to appreciate that they did not notice before, and although they may find Harriet prickly and difficult at times, they will never find her boring.