Harriet the Spy - Hardcover

Fitzhugh, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385327838 ISBN 13: 9780385327831

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2000

Synopsis

Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she's written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together?

About this title

Review:

More than 30 years before it was made into a movie, Harriet the Spy was a groundbreaking book: its unflinchingly honest portrayal of childhood problems and emotions changed children's literature forever. Happily, neither Fitzhugh's style has dated nor her themes become obsolete, and it is still recognized as one of the finest children's novels around. The fascinating story centres around an intensely curious and intelligent girl, Harriet, who literally spies on people and writes about them in her secret notebook, trying to make sense of life's absurdities. When her classmates find her notebook and read her painfully blunt comments about them, Harriet finds herself a lonely outcast. Fitzhugh's writing is astonishingly vivid, real and engaging, and Harriet, by no means a typical, lovable heroine, is one of literature's most unforgettable characters. (Ages 8 to 12)

Review:

A New York Public Library's 100 Great Children's Books 100 Years selection

"This is the book that made me want to be a writer. [Harriet] was the first fictional female character I ever came across who privileged her own truth above the expectations put on her as a little girl." --Anna Holmes for Bookish.com

"I don't know of a better novel about the costs and rewards of being a truth teller, nor of any book that made more readers of my generation want to become fiction writers. I love the story of Harriet so much I feel as if I lived it." --Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections

"Harriet the Spy bursts with life."--School Library Journal

"The characterizations are marvelously shrewd."--The Bulletin

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385327838
• ISBN 13: 9780385327831
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320