Harriet the Spy facts for kids
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First ever edition
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| Author | Louise Fitzhugh |
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| Illustrator | Louise Fitzhugh |
| Genre | Children's spy novel |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
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Publication date
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1964 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 298 (first ed.) |
| ISBN | 978-0-440-41679-1 |
| OCLC | 301132 |
| LC Class | PZ7.F5768 Har |
| Followed by | The Long Secret |
Harriet the Spy is a children's novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh that was published in 1964. It has been called "a milestone in children's literature" and a "classic". In the U.S. it ranked number 12 in The 50 Best Books for Kids and number 17 in The Top 100 Children's Novels on two lists generated in 2012.
It was followed by two sequels or "companion books", The Long Secret (1965) and Sport (1979).
Plot summary
In 1964, eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. Harriet is precocious, ambitious and enthusiastic about her future career. Encouraged by her nanny, Catherine "Ole Golly," Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career, to which she dedicates her life. She follows an afternoon "spy route", during which she observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood. One subject that Harriet observes is a local store, where the younger son Fabio cannot make anything of his career in contrast to the hardworking and loyal Bruno, and where the stock boy Joe Curry or "Little Joe" is eating in the storeroom and feeding homeless kids instead of working.
Harriet's best friends are Simon "Sport" Rocque, a serious boy who wants to be a CPA or a ball player, and Janie Gibbs, who wants to be a scientist. Harriet's enemies in her class are Marion Hawthorne, the teacher's pet and self-appointed queen bee of her class, and Marion's best friend and second-in-command, Rachel Hennessy.
Harriet enjoys having structure in her life. For example, she regularly eats tomato sandwiches and adamantly refuses to consume other types of sandwiches. She also resists "girlie" activities, as when her parents expect her to attend dance school and she stubbornly refuses. Ole Golly gets Harriet to change her mind on dance school by telling her the stories of Josephine Baker and Mata Hari.
Harriet's life changes abruptly when Ole Golly's suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, proposes and she accepts. Mrs. Welsch (who, ironically, had threatened to fire her earlier in a fit of panicked rage at finding Harriet missing in the middle of the night) exclaims, "You can't leave, what will we do without you?" Ole Golly replies that she had planned to leave soon anyway, because she believes Harriet is old enough to care for herself. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny, to whom she was very close. Her mother and father, who have been largely absentee parents because of their obligations to work and social life, are at a loss to understand Harriet's feelings and are of little comfort to her.
At school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at her brutally honest documentation of her opinions of them. For example, in the notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father, and says that Marion Hawthorne is destined to grow up to be a "lady Hitler." The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch and passing nasty notes about her in class. When the kids orchestrate a prank to spill ink on Harriet and make it look like an accident, it backfires when she slaps Marion in revenge, leaving a blue hand print on Marion's face.
Harriet regularly spies on the Spy Catcher Club through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. She realizes the consequences of the mean things she wrote, but because she is hurt and lonely, she thinks up special punishments for each member of the club. After getting into trouble for carrying out some of her plans, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened, but they both reject her. Harriet stops doing schoolwork and spends all her time in class writing in her notebook, making plans against the Spy Catcher Club. She skips school for days at a time and stays in bed because of depression. When her grades go down, Harriet's parents confiscate her notebook, which only depresses her further.
Harriet's mother takes her daughter to see a psychiatrist, who advises Harriet's parents to get in touch with Ole Golly and ask her to write to Harriet. In her letter, Ole Golly tells Harriet that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you don't like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend."
Meanwhile, dissent is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion and Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same.
Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper, replacing Marion. The newspaper—featuring stories about the people on Harriet's spy route and the students' parents—becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to print a retraction of the things she had written in her journal. Harriet is forgiven by Sport and Janie.
Selected translations
- Harriet - Spionage aller Art (German, 1968)
- Harriet l'Espionne (French, 1980)
- הרייט המרגלת (Hebrew, 1984, ISBN: 9650302190)
- Professione? Spia! (Italian, 1989, ISBN: 8804322802)
- スパイになりたいハリエットのいじめ解決法 / Supai ni naritai harietto no ijime kaiketsuhō (Japanese, 1995, ISBN: 4061947303)
- A Espiã (Portuguese, 1999, ISBN: 8571646414)
- Spiunia Harrietë (Albanian, 2016, ISBN: 9789928219091)
Series
Fitzhugh wrote two sequels to the book: The Long Secret (1965) and Sport (1979, published posthumously). Both books received mixed reviews.
Sport is a spin-off that focuses on Simon "Sport" Rocque, expanding upon his brief family background covered in Harriet the Spy. As his parents are divorced, Sport lives with his father who is a struggling writer who has been focusing on a book (a big gamble) rather than the steady income of journal/newspaper articles, with Sport managing their finances. Their financial problems are exacerbated once Sport's grandfather Simon Vane (from his mother's side) becomes terminally ill and stops sending regular payments to Sport. Things change for the better once Sport's father meets the kind Kate who becomes a good stepmother. However Simon's will has named Sport as the main beneficiary to the $30 million family fortune, much to the chagrin of Sport's mother Charlotte Vane and her sister. Charlotte, an absentee mother who has been living well abroad in Europe most of the time, returns to New York City upon hearing of her father's illness, scheming to increase her share of Simon's inheritance by kidnapping Sport and imprisoning him in the Plaza Hotel for a week.
In 2002, a sequel Harriet Spies Again appeared; written by Helen Ericson, it also received mixed reviews. Another sequel, Harriet the Spy, Double Agent by Maya Gold, was published in 2005; one review of that book stated "there's not much to interest readers here."
- Harriet the Spy (Harper & Row, 1964); also Harriet, the Spy
- The Long Secret (Harper & Row, 1965)
- Sport (Dell Publishing/Delacorte Press, 1979), Fitzhugh
- Harriet Spies Again (Dell/Delacorte, 2002), Helen Ericson [and Fitzhugh]
- Harriet the Spy, DoubleAgent (Dell/Delacorte, 2005), Maya Gold and Fitzhugh
Adaptations
Film rights to the novel were bought by Herbert Swope in 1964.
Harriet the Spy was made into a 1996 film of the same name. It starred Michelle Trachtenberg and was the first film to be produced by Nickelodeon's feature film division. It was close captioned by the National Captioning Institute with the new close captioning it developed for Kids WB in its original home video release.
In September 2004, Mainframe Entertainment announced that Protocol Entertainment will produce a new Harriet the Spy live-action television series, consisting of at least 22 half-hour episodes, with 2 Friends Entertainment acting as Executive Producers and US sales agent and Mainframe retaining international distribution rights.
In March 2010, Disney Channel aired a version of the story, Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars. This starred Wizards of Waverly Place cast member Jennifer Stone as Harriet, Alexander Conti from Cheaper by the Dozen 2 as Harriet's friend Sport, and Degrassi: The Next Generation's Melinda Shankar as Janie. In this film Harriet competes against Marion Hawthorne to see who has a better blog.
In August 2020, it was announced that Apple TV+ had given the production a series order to an animated adaptation of the novel. The series will be produced by The Jim Henson Company and Rehab Entertainment with Will McRobb as writer, Sidney Clifton as producer and Terissa Kelton and John W. Hyde as executive producer and starring Beanie Feldstein as Harriet, Jane Lynch as Ole Golly, and Lacey Chabert as Marion Hawthorne.
