Harriet the Spy

The 1996 Harriet the Spy was a great movie which made excellent use of the color yellow.  I kept visualizing characters from the movie, even though they did not seem to quite match the book descriptions. I'd also get things mixed up with Friendship Experiment which followed a very similar character.

What struck me now is the "not quite real" society that is displayed. The book takes place in Manhattan, but it feels very different than a Manhattan that we would know today. Harriet comes from an extremely well-to-do families, but were free to roam around the city with minimal structure. They have a cook and a nanny. Her mother has somewhat of an entitled view of coming home and having a drink ready for her. She doesn't want to worry about things. Her best friend Sport lives with a single father who struggles to work as a writer. Sport takes on a lot of household responsibility. Other children seem to be a mixture of various classes. Would these characters really intermingle at the same school? And would they also regularly run into each other out in the community. Was New York like that at one time? Or is this just a fantasy dream world?

As for the story, Harriet just can't help spying. This gets her in trouble when the other kids realize the mean things she wrote about them. Today, this would probably be an errant posting on social media - perhaps a personal snapchat that got copied and forwarded. She observes a lot of societal dysfunction, but also sees a lot of positives behind it.