From: Gretchen P Dombrock <GPDOMBRO>
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 96 10:36 CDT

I, too, read _Harriet the Spy_ as a child in the seventies. I remember the amazement I felt at reading about this child. She was someone that everyone could relate too, regrardless of socio?onomical, or even geographical, background. At times she was devious and disagreeable, but who isn't? For me she was an affirmation because I didn't know that it was "alright" to think things that she thought. Children's Lieterature before _Harriet_ didn't seem to admit to that side of childhood.

The scene in _Harriet_ which stays with me most vividly is when the other children find her journal and she knows that they know what she thinks. It is a heart-stopping, breath caught, topsy-turvy stomach moment if ever there was one.
 The fear of the exposure and the reprisals hits you right in the gut and for that moment you react with animal instinct. But children know that feeling because who better than a child can understand the cruelty of other children. I believe it is that more than anything else that caused the uproar among adults who had nearly succeeded in forhgetting that aspect of their own childhoods.
(Comments from those who were adults when the book wsas published?)

And on a related topic: for those who have the time this summer, consider reading Fitzhugh's _Nobody's Family is Going to Change_) It is nearly as wonderful as _Harriet_.
  Gretchen Dombrock New York Public Library gpdombro at macc.wisc.edu
  Note: Please excuse typos. Unfortunately I do not possess the luxury of editing from this computer!
Received on Tue 02 Jul 1996 10:36:00 AM CDT