#louise fitzhugh

[adaptationsdaily]

Harriet The Spy (1996) Directed by: Bronwen Hughes

#harriet the spy #Brownwen Hughes #literature #Louise Fitzhugh #filmgifs #moviegifs #dailyflicks #filmedit #filmandtv #singinprincess #tuserheidi #userpavlova #1990sedit #movieedit #userfilm #ours #by natty

[everythingyoueverlovedisgay]

#louise fitzhugh #author #harriet the spy #writer #literature #lesbian #everything is gay

[mage8]

Dear secret spy notebook

This week my neighbor has been arguing with the lesbians that live across the street from him. i wonder if the story he is writing is going badly. He has been writing less in his journal and more on his typewriter. When he's done typing he rips the page out and takes it across the street and slides it under the front door. Then he goes home and watches from his window behind his curtains. He thinks nobody sees him watching but the lesbians have definitely noticed. They write him replies then sit in their window laughing and giggling (they are too poor to own curtains their apartment is really shabby). Ole Golly thinks I don't know the word lesbians but I overheard mother discussing lesbians with her ladies book club. Being a lesbian doesn't seem too bad. Who would want to marry a smelly boy anyway? And since polite society disapproves of you, you never have to go to any stuffy parties. You might have to live in a shabby apartment, but since I'm planning on being a writer, it looks like that might be what I'm in for anyway, if what daddy says about starving writers is true.

Harriet the Spy

#Louise Fitzhugh said Harriet is “a nasty little girl who keeps a notebook on all of her friends.” #queer icons the both of them #Louise Fitzhugh #Harriet the Spy #crack #haven't slept in almost 40 hours #Dexter Gordon is lovely to listen to with sleep deprivation #night in tunisia

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

A collection of iconic moments from the sequel to Harriet the Spy, written in 1965

Harriet, age 11, and Beth Ellen, 12, debate the antiwork movement

Candid discussion of menstruation and different experiences of it, including the protagonist getting dragged for overdramatizing the process

One of many conversations on religion, whether or not God exists, and whether it can be validated or valued at all. The story features characters of all opinions on the topic

Harriet has some strong words about homemakers and mothers

#when i tell you i literally have a folder full of excerpts from this book #written by a gay woman and it shows #written over 50 years ago and still 100 for accuracy #harriet the spy #the long secret #children's literature #kids books #louise fitzhugh #shitposting #funny #best of

[autisticcharacterslist]

Harriet M. Welch from Harriet the Spy. Focused, determined, ambitious, & imaginative. Stubborn, judgemental of others, unaware of people's feelings. Eats same foods (a cheese sandwich for lunch every day). Lacks any sense of boundaries. Special interests: spying & writing. Writes as a form of stimming. My younger self 😇

#autistic women #autistic pride #actually autism #actually neurodivergent #actually autistic #autism #autism pride #autism culture #harriet the spy #louise fitzhugh #autistic community #autistic characters

[quotesfrommyreading]

Reading Harriet the Spy today as an adult, I find a queer subtext throughout. Not only is Harriet the quintessential baby butch, but her best friends, Sport and Janie, run exactly contrary to gender stereotypes. Sport acts as the homemaker and nurturing caretaker of his novelist father, while Janie the scientist plans to blow up the world one day. It was as if Fitzhugh was telling us kids back in the sixties that you didn’t have to play by society’s rules, the first lesson a queer kid has to learn in order to be happy. Harriet’s whole ordeal — being ostracized by her friends after they invade her privacy by reading her spy notebook — sounds to me very much like a coming-out story. Her parents’ response to it all is to take her to a psychiatrist for analysis. Sound familiar? Most importantly, the sage Ole Golly resolves matters with a piece of advice that takes on special meaning for queer kids: Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.

 —   On Spies and Purple Socks and Such

#louise fitzhugh #kathleen t. horning #harriet the spy #on spies and purple socks and such #history #lgbt history #lgbt #literature #books #reading #authors #friendship #children #lesbian #butch lesbian #homophobia #closeted #outing #housework #science #chemistry

[rickkanelives]

Four more of my favorite novels!

+ The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill

+ A Stranger Came Ashore by Mollie Hunter

+ The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh

+ The Goats by Brock Cole

#books #book #reading #inspiration #mollie hunter #jean merrill #louise fitzhugh #brock cole

[kilterstreet]

I guard my memories and love them, but I don't get in them and lie down.

from Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

#Harriet the Spy #excerpts and quotes #Louise Fitzhugh

[bonjourmelodie]

Was just thinking to myself yesterday how I no longer own my favorite childhood book and then today I find this first edition copy <3

#harriet the spy #Louise fitzhugh #syncronicity #personal #books

[pikablob]

Three weeks after an accident claimed her parents, and two weeks after Ole Golly formally took custody of her, Harriet Welsch comes to her now-guardian with a painful question.

So, after my amazing partner @furashuban introduced me to the new Harriet the Spy TV show, I had to write something specially for her and for this series in general. I’m sorry, I know she moves away eventually in the book, and it’s a big point that Harriet has to learn to live without her, but Ole Golly is a better guardian than her actual mom and I will die on that hill...

#harriet the spy #harriet m welsh #ole golly #catherine willa galliano #hurt/comfort #adoption #car accident tw #mentioned death tw #parent death tw #grief tw #louise fitzhugh #also there's a pretty big #magic misfits #reference in here #>;3

[52booksproject]

Book 10 Harriet the Spy

One of the central lessons in Harriet the Spy is that what you think you want isn't always what you should have, and boy did I learn that lesson.

The random letter generator wasn't producing plausible pairs of letters so finally when it generated "FZ" I decided a name starting with "Fitz" was good enough and I landed on someone named Louise Fitzhugh, who to my delight had written Harriet the Spy, a book recommended by none other than the ultimate intellectual herself, Lisa Simpson. I was just slightly older than the target demographic of the movie that came out in the 90s and I had assumed the book was from around then too. Imagine my surprise when Harriet was displaying some pretty crazy internal misogyny in the first pages (she's playing "town" by inventing people which she does by imagining a man and his occupation, then fleshing him out with a wife- ouch for women residents!). And her friend wants an "Indian Chief" in the town which Harriet counters by saying the person has to work in television somehow (a Native American can't work in TV? News to me!). Anyway, all this casual racism and misogyny made sense when I found out it was written in 1966 and not the 1990s.

Maybe I should have been a kid when I read this, and I would have gotten it more, but to me Harriet is just mean. She judges people heavily by their physical appearance and very few people seem to please her in that department. She even writes horrible things about her friends. Like that her second best friend Janie who works with chemicals in her spare time (mostly trying to blow things up- my favorite character in the book besides Peter) could never be a scientist who is she kidding. How is that a fair conclusion to draw? And her poor friend Sport who has to parent his dad she thinks is tedious for venting about it. She even hates some kid named Pinky as the worst thing ever, but it's never once demonstrated in the book he's ever done anything wrong. Show- don't tell- your characterization! I don't know, maybe you are supposed to dislike Harriet a little like Emma (from Emma).

The big solution that she gets to be a writer about various things she's seen doesn't logically follow. She just says the same mean things about people that got her friends mad at her in the first place, it's just not about them publicly anymore. Anyway, I did dislike Harriet slightly less in the end, so maybe that was the point. Sorry about ragging on that so much; the book does have its good points. There are good character pieces in the people Harriet spies on. Ole Golly is of course the most interesting character and an intellectual who is always quoting various things so there's a lot of good exposure to classic literature.

BEST LINE: "All the men in the Health Department wore hats and Harrieson Withers didn't know anybody who wore a hat."

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK: As an adult, maybe, maybe not? I'm not going to stop you- it's not a *bad* book by any means; I just wouldn't put it on the top of my list like Lisa did. A kid might need a discussion on some of the latent issues from it being written in the 1960s.

ART PROJECT: Fitzhugh has a delightful inky scribbly illustration style which I couldn't quite match, but loved. Harriet has a bad dream portending doom about Ole Golly being a horrible crow monster with teeth, so I knew immediately I'd be drawing that.

#harriet the spy #louise fitzhugh #52books #52booksproject

[dontdenymeshakespeare]

Reading Should Be a Freedom

In honour of Banned Books Week...

In honour of this being the last day of Banned Books Week, here’s the essay I wrote for this year’s event. I hope you’ll hop over to my Substack and give it read. There’s a link below for ease. https://esdeanbookish.substack.com/p/reading-should-be-a-freedom

View On WordPress

#Anne Frank #Banned Books #Banned Books Week #Harriet the Spy #Herman Melville #Louise Fitzhugh #Moby-Dick #Reader #Reading #The Diary of a Young Girl #Writing

[ethanmaldridge]

"Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth." -Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet The Spy

Today marks ten years since I first came out as gay. I got this ring to commemorate the occasion (and because I recently turned in my next novel, which always feels miraculous).

I didn't come out all at once. It would be months before I told my family, and I'm still coming out in small ways as my world expands. But it's been a decade since I first said the words out loud, to my closest friends, to the boy I had just kissed, to myself.

I came out later than a lot of queer people my age. It was a long road to get there. I remember being scared a lot. I knew how the world felt about people like me because it made those feelings violently clear. I kept a big part of myself secret for a long time because it was the only way I could keep safe. I lied, to everyone, until I was safe enough to tell the truth.

Since then, so much has happened. I found a family of friends who gave me space and time and understanding enough to be who I am. I've built a career of telling lies that tell the truth (the job of any fiction writer). I've been welcomed by a vibrant, colorful, messy, wondrous community. I fell in love for the first time.

I'm grateful to my friends who have guided me on this journey. I'm grateful to my family, because even in those uncertain early days when things got rough, they were always clear that I would be loved. And I'm grateful to that first boy I kissed, who I would later marry, and who has been with me every day since. I've been lucky.

If you're still in the closet, if you still have to lie to keep yourself safe, hang on. The world is still dangerous, still violent to those it deems too different. But there is a family waiting for you when the time comes. Lie for now if you have to. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.

#About me #gay #lgbt

[gowns]

the fact that ann m. martin, louise fitzhugh, and margaret wise brown are all confirmed queer women who wrote the children's books that meant the most to me as a kid.......

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Harriet the Spy 2 continues to break ground with 1965's version of shitposting from a side character

#why is harriet the spy 2 so iconic #read alongs with 360 #the long secret #louise fitzhugh #harriet the spy #shitposting #beth ellen needs a therapist

[deadpanwalking]

what have you enjoyed reading lately?

Read a bunch of good recently published ones this week—a biography of Louise Fitzhugh (the lesbian icon who wrote Harriet the Spy), Julia Cimafiejeva's last poetry collection, Ada Calhoun's memoir, the new collection of Robert Lowell's nonfiction—but I'm using this ask as a vehicle to recommend Tom Crewe's A New Life to my Victorian invert fandom mutuals.

#anyway. not me about to crack open john guillory's book on literary study at 11:30pm on a monday but if i don't who will #anonymous #assbox