About the Author

Louise Fitzhugh (1928-1974) was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She attended Bard College, studied art in Italy and France, and continued her studies in New York at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union. Her books Harriet the Spy, The Long Secret, and Sport have been acclaimed as milestones of children's literature. These classics delight readers year after year.

Reviews

Gr 3-6-Louise Fitzhugh's novel (HarperCollins, 1964), comes to life in this superbly narrated recording. Harriet M. Welsch, an intensely curious and intelligent 11-year-old, aspires to be a writer when she grows up. Encouraged by her nurse, Ole Golly, she practices for this future vocation by spying on people on her after-school route and writing about them in her secret notebook. She is a keen observer of all that goes on around her as she tries to make sense out of life. When her classmates find her notebook and read her painfully blunt comments about them, Harriet finds herself an outcast. Even her best friends, Sport and Janie, desert her. Harriet has to find a way to win back her friends without giving up her own individuality. The narrator varies the voices of each character so clearly and consistently that listeners can picture their distinct characteristics as well as their eccentricities. The sound quality is very crisp, and the narration is always energetic with precise enunciation of every word. This recording of one of the best children's books ever written will be an excellent addition to any school or public library collection.-Kristina Aaronson, Bethel Elementary School, , VT Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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

Finding Harriet as a young writer in the mid 1960s was inspiring. It meant I wasn't the only one who wanted to tell stories about kids who were real.--JUDY BLUME "I don't know of a better novel...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