Louise Fitzhugh and photographer Gina Jackson, about 1952. So I turned to writing.” And Jonathan Franzen wrote a blurb on the cover of the anniversary edition (see picture at top of page). “Of course, I ate tomato sandwiches and wanted to be a spy. Mystery writer Cara Black also read Harriet. In Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, a book about a reading one book a day for a year, Nina Sankovitch mentions that she so identified with Harriet that she insisted on carrying a notebook and a flashlight. Many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have cited it as a major influence. I read Harriet several times as a child – probably the last time was in seventh grade. And when her writing got her into trouble, we empathized. You didn’t wonder why the gear: it seemed natural, especially for Harriet, an aspiring writer who spied on people and took notes. The cover art was irresistible: a bespectacled girl in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans strolls through a run-down New York neighborhood carrying a notebook, with a flashlight hooked to her belt. If you were a girl in the 1960’s, you were nine or ten when you read Harriet the Spy.
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