CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Revisiting Harriet the Spy Nearly a Half Century Later
Book One
I recently began rereading Harriet the Spy because I wondered if my nearly fifty-nine-year-old self would be as in love with the book as my nine-year-old self had been.
The first time I read Harriet the Spy, I was in the fourth grade. Originally published in 1964, by the time I read it five years later, it was out in paperback. I had come across it at a book store that was conveniently located next to a Baskin Robbins where my parents and I often went for a Saturday night ice cream cone and book browsing.
Part of what I loved about Harriet the Spy was that Harriet was an only child.
I was also an only child and in 1969, being an only child was not at all fashionable. Outside of a single half-cousin, I did not even know another only child. People did, however, often tell me I must be spoiled because I had my own room, and there was an assumption that I did not know how to “share.”
The other part of what I loved about Harriet was that she had a spy route. Like Harriet, I tended to be nosy. This was due in no small part to the fact that as an only children of that era, I often found myself surrounded by adults, and in that time the line between the world of the adult and the…
