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Just a cautionary note to parents. If you want darkness, stimulation, character development, and excellent writing in a completely original imaginative landscape then try the Guardians of Ga'hoole series. Can't we allow them a few years of innocence and fun before the onslaught of the teenage turmoil and adulthood.
We got a few chapters into to before my daughter asked (begged) me to stop reading it. I mean quoting Dostoesky. This isn't a "fun" or innocent book for younger children, as you might imagine from a cursory look, or from what you might glean from the title and packaging.
And some of the effort to introduce complexity comes across as risible. A lot of it is just downright mean, and not in any helpful sense. On reflection, why would we want to introduce young kids to such themes as alienation, existentialism, class warfare, entitlement, and on and on.
Honestly, how pretentious. My 8-year old has read the first seven volumes and can't put them down.
I had high hopes for Harriet, but how can anyone like, let alone want to spend 300 hundred pages with, such a wretched little brat. Frankweiler by Konisburg or Inkheart by Funke. For they may be able to relate to Harriet's anger and resentment at the whole world.
Action. Hardly; Harriet has more of the qualities of a villain. She's so boring and self-centered and just writes in her pathetic little spy book all day; where's the action.
But a hero. Sorry, not with this book. For those stuck in a temporarily selfish rut in their lives (hey all of us fall into it from time to time), or for those who feel like they are currently doing everything for everyone else and nothing for themselves, perhaps this book has some worth.
Please look at the other 1 and 2 star reviews for other reasons to avoid this train wreck.For those looking for a kids book with a female heroine that got it right, try Matilda by Roald Dahl, From the Mixed Up Files of Basil E. All heroines with some anger issues, but dealt with by much more talented authors.
She wants to write about everyone. I think Louise Fitzhugh is trying to say that you should not write about your friends in a mean way or maybe they will not be your friends any more. The book is a novel about a girl named Harriet and her two best friends Sport and Beth Ellen. Will she ever see her notebook again. Here is an example: "I bet that lady weighs 100 pounds and is a super model and feels terrible with not that munch food."And that's all I am going to tell you. She writes about her friends and classmates too. It all happens in New York City on the East side in a fancy apartment building.
I like the middle where everything exciting happens but I will not tell you because it gives it away the ending. Harriet is a spy. I love this book and I hope you like it too. But Harriet loses her notebook and all her friends read all the good and bad stuff she wrote about them. Well, I am not going to tell you so read the book your self to find out. But I will say that it is one of my favorite books and that some of the entries are so funny. This book is 300 pages so I think that people between the ages of 7-100 who love spies would like this book the most.by Elizabeth
Harriet The Spy was one of my favorites growing up and I had not read it in a long time and looking back I am not quite sure if all of the messages and meanings in the book can be fully understood by younger readers completely.That is not meant in a bad way at all, the book works as a general reading book for younger more advanced readers in terms of the plot and Harriet as she goes through her life and journal, together with the ramifications of what those bring when the journal is discovered.Of course young readers can relate to the feelings and the alienation, but there are so many messages that are being converyed that some of the them become clearer to see as you get a bit older - in other words this works for young readers on one or more levels and as an adult you can read it and see more of the depth of the messages being told.For younger readers, it may be a good idea to read this first so you can be prepared to speak with the issues and questions that can be raised and to help guide them along in learning how to read and interpret what is going on.
Book two shows the girl without this towering influence in her young life. But for Harriet keeping a Notebook IS her work--one which she relishes. Welsch experiences stormydays in 6th grade as a result of her habit/hobby/obsession: writing down her thoughts and observations in a notebook all during the day. Fitzhugh subtly suggests the importance of writing and the responsibility of authors.
Oh no, but during the schoolday in her actual classroom--when she should be concentrating on lessons or doing her work. Eleven-year-old Harriet M. We sympathize with Harriet's struggle to accept the sudden loss of this mentor in literature and social behavior. Is a public retraction too humiliating. Disaster occurs when her famous notebook accidentally is lost and then read aloud by her classmates, who are anything but flattered or amused by her juvenile commentary.
Perhaps she was too dependent on her nanny, but the sidden, harsh separation undermined her foundation of common sense.This story should appeal to elementary children since it examines group dynamics and school situations. Kids will relate to Harriet's increasing shunning, as well as be amused by her desperate measures to prove herself independent and unbowed regarding her Journaling mania; Harriet learns the Power and the Peril of the Pen. Not just on her after-school Spy Route (when she snoops through windows and even sneaks into private homes to ferret out information about her adult neighbors). How to balance truthful reportage with consideration to others. In fact there ensues a nasty social revolt; Harriet is so discomfited by the peer hostility that her desperate parents send her to a professional child psychologist.
This rather long YA book is divided into two parts: Book one depicts her critical relationship with her matronly, non-nonsense nanny--Ole Golly. Are lies justified to recover lost friendships.
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