Malinda Lo

At the beginning of this year, I resolved to read four specific novels. One of those was Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.

A word of warning to those who count this book as one of their childhood favorites: I’m about to say some things that may sound critical. I really enjoyed the book a lot, but I’m reading it as an adult, and a few things startled me about the book. That’s what I’m noting below. OK, on to the drama:

This is an approximation of my thought process as I was reading the book:

• Haha! Harriet is so funny!
• Ole Golly’s mother! So tragic. Also disturbing.
• OMG, Harriet did not just do that.
• Yes, she did.
• Dear lord, how spoiled is this child?
• Alert! Alert! Class issues everywhere! I probably would never have gotten this as a kid.
• Harriet, you crack me up.
• Harriet, you are so infuriating!
• What is with Harriet’s parents?
• Oh, wow. I hope I was not so self-absorbed in my youth. Crap, I probably was.
• Here it comes … yep. They found the notebook. This is where the shit hits the fan, isn’t it?
• Harriet, I feel bad for you. You are a mass of seething emotions and yet do not understand them at all. Damn, you’re just like I was.
• LOL. Harriet, you are spoiled and often vicious but man, you are also hilarious.
• Woo! New notebook! Except … she learned nothing from this experience.
• Hmm. Lying is OK sometimes, huh?
• Interesting. In a good way.

I found Harriet the Spy hilarious, mind-boggling, and sometimes a bit disturbing. But those were my thoughts as an adult. I’m not sure what I would have thought had I read it as a child. I suspect I might have cheered Harriet on, since in retrospect, I was a lot like Harriet. I wrote extremely frankly in my diaries, and if anybody I wrote about ever read what I wrote, I would probably be just as ostracized. And I carried that honesty and tactlessness out into the real world, where kindlier souls saw it as precocious enthusiasm. But as I grew up, I had to learn how to (1) lie a little when necessary; and (2) exercise tact.

The thing I found most shocking, as an adult reader, was the fact that none of the adults in the book seemed to think Harriet’s spying was a problem. The problem was that she was caught. I was startled to discover that I was actually waiting for Harriet to learn a lesson, and I didn’t feel that she did.

This was interesting to me because as a writer of young adult fiction, I’m always asked what lessons I want readers to get from Ash. I always feel a bit annoyed by this question, because I didn’t write it to teach anyone a lesson about anything. So imagine my surprise (and chagrin) when I caught myself wondering the same thing about Harriet the Spy.

When I read YA fiction, I’m not looking for morals. (I’m not looking for them in adult fiction, either.) In some books I can’t avoid seeing lessons coming from a mile away, and those are the books I tend to dislike. But I think that because Harriet the Spy is for younger readers, I somehow took on the attitude of a moral-instructing adult.

Realizing that, actually, was a good lesson for me as a writer. Because I believe that a writer should never approach a story with a moral in mind. It’s OK if a moral or a lesson naturally evolves from the story, but placing one there from the get-go is a one-way ticket to pablum. Harriet the Spy is definitely not that.

Thinking about Harriet the Spy as a writer, I am only impressed by the depth and vitality of Harriet’s character. She is so real she made me laugh out loud and shout at the page. I am also impressed by the way that class is so clearly delineated within the book, as well as Harriet’s slow dawning about her own family’s position within society’s class structures. But most of all, I’m impressed by Fitzhugh’s courage in writing a character so sharp, so opinionated, and so unlike most other little girls in children’s fiction.