Last week
marked the 50th year since the release of Harriet the Spy, the groundbreaking novel by Louise Fitzhugh.
Here’s an
article about it in Publisher’s Weekly:
http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/61119-harriet-the-spy-celebrates-50-years-of-sleuthing.html
When I first
read Harriet the Spy, I was about
nine. For the first time, I recognized
myself in print. I didn’t look like
Harriet (although I appreciated that she chose to wear glasses, a condition foisted
on me by virtue of bad eyes), and I lived not in Manhattan but in Berkeley,
California, which struck me at the time as woefully pedestrian. I
went to a rather large public school, my father was a surgeon, and no one in my
neck of the woods had either nannies or cooks.
I did not have a Sport or a Janie in my life: my best friend was Susan,
who I think wanted to be a cartoonist. (Now
I see this as admirable, but at the time, I desperately wanted a friend who
planned on blowing up the world.)
Nothing
about me looked like Harriet. And yet, I
saw myself in her. What I saw was a girl
who understood what writing was, what it meant, why it mattered. A girl who valued her interior life more than
her social life and had to struggle to make room for the friends she loved a
lot. Someone who thought she didn’t care what other
people thought about her but, in fact, did.
Someone who genuinely liked herself, even as she was able to take meticulous note of
her flaws.
Of course, I
tried to spy. I couldn’t. Houses in Berkeley were too exposed, and
there were no dumbwaiters. Also, I was
shy and terrified of being caught. In
that, I was not like Harriet. It was a
source of profound disappointment.
I tried to
like tomato sandwiches. Ultimately, I
had to admit that I liked pizza more.
But I did
write everything down. I looked at
people wherever I was, and I wrote about them.
And that was how I found myself, how I finally realized who I was.
I strongly
urge everyone who hasn’t already done so to read the book. It is still wonderful, and you will be a
better person for having met Harriet.
She remains a treasure.
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